Meet Philippa Portnoy

We recently connected with Philippa Portnoy and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Philippa with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?

My work ethic stems from my athletic background. I started playing tennis at 13, later than most aspiring college athletes, and worked hard to catch up, training five hours a day during the summers. This dedication helped me walk onto Barnard’s Division III tennis team. With limited funding and less favorable practice slots compared to the men’s team, early morning practices in Riverside Park became routine, and I pushed myself to improve.
When Barnard joined Columbia’s new athletic consortium in my sophomore year, we moved to Division I. I embraced the challenge of balancing more intense training with academics, a discipline that carried over into my career and family life. As a mother of triplet boys, I’ve juggled their care with my professional interests.
Now, as co-founder of LaunchBreak, I work 6-7 days a week building a women’s athletic community. Since our January launch, we’ve grown to nearly 1,500 members, including 150+ pro athletes and athletes from over 650 universities.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I co-founded LaunchBreak with my former Columbia doubles partner, Teresa Saputo-Crerend, to create a networking community of current and former athletes who play/ed women’s sports at the collegiate, national, and professional levels. After years of mentoring young women and athletes, we saw a gap in the market for a platform that connects women across generations, sports, and professions, especially given the proven success of former women athletes in the business world. According to a study by Ernst & Young and ESPNW, 94% of women in C-suite positions played sports at some point in their lives, with over half (52%) having competed at the university level.
The most exciting part of our business is meeting and learning about the fascinating stories of our members. Our community includes Olympians, a naval submarine officer, pioneers who fought for more equity in women’s sports, a viral sensation who had her image on a Wheaties box as a child, semi-pro tackle football players, parents, members founding amazing startups in the healthcare and women’s sports apparel businesses, and nonprofits aimed at keeping young girls in sports, helping veterans with mental health, and more.
Our community has some exciting announcements coming up – a launch of a robust job board for job seekers and employers interested in hiring women’s athletes and a new partner sponsoring some of our social media. We have also recently launched a space for entrepreneurs to connect with advisors, investors, and peers.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

The three most important qualities in my journey have been being thick-skinned, prepared, and multi-dimensional.
First, learning to take criticism without letting it adversely affect me was key to my success, a lesson I gained from tough coaches and later applied in banking, where brushing off negativity and delivering quality work was essential.
Second, preparation is crucial. In today’s environment, doing due diligence before meetings—researching clients on LinkedIn and social media, anticipating questions, and setting goals—makes a huge difference.
Lastly, being multi-dimensional is valuable. Having a broad range of interests, from current events, the arts, finance, and sports, helps build connections and navigate diverse conversations. Working back in the day in the male-dominated field of aviation finance, being able to easily discuss sports with my superiors and clients was very useful.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

LaunchBreak seeks partnerships with employers interested in hiring women athletes and companies looking to promote products or services to our community, which spans from current student-athletes to retirees. Partners in fitness, professional development, fashion, health, wellness, and nutrition, or a variety of industries could benefit from our demographics. We can also offer valuable R&D feedback on the benefit of athletics on women’s health, new sports apparel or equipment/products, or consumption of women’s sports media. We also welcome support/resources for our entrepreneurs including investors and advisors. Contact us at [email protected] for more information.

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LaunchBreak

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