The Fourth Floor is an exciting community dedicated to fostering female entrepreneurship and advancing careers. Members of The Fourth Floor, have access to events, online resources, and targeted opportunities.
The Fourth Floor represents the time in a woman’s career (and life) when she has attained the necessary perspective to effectively use the expertise and influence she has gained to enact positive change in response to landscape challenges. The Fourth Floor exists above the noise, but offers room to continue to rise up!
Founded by two career general counsels and one serial entrepreneur, The Fourth Floor believes that when executives meet founders magic happens, investments are made, and board seats are exchanged. Membership is limited to founders ready to scale, legal executives, and industry leaders with a history of providing companies with strategic business guidance.
A legal executive is a career in-house attorney who has worked for a company in its legal function for at least 10 years and is in a leadership position. Attorneys that primarily work in a law firm setting are not included in this definition
A legal executive may choose to suggest resources, offer best practices, spot issues, and/or provide timing and billing estimates when working with outside counsel or other professionals that routinely service early stage companies, but perhaps most importantly that person can support growth through strategic guidance, advice and connections. Each relationship will be unique and membership is not a substitution for receiving specific legal advice from your in-house or outside counsel. A legal executive member is not expected, for example, to draft corporate documents, file trademarks, appear in court, review legal bills, or negotiate a dispute on behalf of a Founder.
The Fourth Floor aims to support founders and executives through board opportunity connections. The Fourth Floor is not intended to be a space for client acquisition and we know that certain service provider executives, law firm lawyers, recruiters, and consultants, have value in our ecosystem. Service providers may become involved through targeted opportunities, and participation in certain events, as SUN MEMBERS.
The Fourth Floor wants to shout our members’ successes from the rooftops. Members are required to promptly disclose to The Fourth Floor all formal relationships entered into due to membership activities. The Fourth Floor can’t wait to cheer you on as we scale together.
The Fourth Floor is primarily made up of female identifying and non-binary individuals. We also welcome male allies who provide a professional referral and/or information pertaining to actions taken to support equality. Please exclude all references to mothers, daughters, and sisters.
The Fourth Floor aims to connect early stage companies with female legal executives and industry leaders for mutual benefit. In order to scale, companies need diverse and thoughtful board members and/or advisors. The experience gained from this relationship can be used in a professional capacity. If a member of The Fourth Floor aims to join a public board, this is a good first step. As the best way to get a board seat is by having board experience.
An Elemental Board Accelerator (otherwise known as a “Cohort”) is a hand-selected group of early stage founders/co-founders, legal executives and industry leaders chosen to participate in a series of events. The aim is for the cultivation of mutually beneficial relatinships that will help to take careers and companies to the next level.
Members are expected to share expertise and resources, and in return they can expect to receive beneficial opportunities. The exchange of Gives and Gets is how The Fourth Floor grows the careers and companies.
Members of The Fourth Floor can expect to meet talented and accomplished people, have interesting conversations, and hopefully make lasting relationships that could turn into prosperous investments. Memberes agree that The Fourth Floor can’t promise anything. The Fourth Floor does not guarantee that each member will fill or receive an advisory role or board seat or obtain a funding opportunity.
As part of the "Gets" we encourage founders to let our community know what they need including funding needs.
It is our online platform where you can find and connect to board opportunities.