⭐️ Championing Women in Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital through events, content & community | Startup Mentor | Strategic Partnerships | Community Builder

I’ve reinvented myself more times than I can count.

From makeup artistry in Toronto to women’s tech events in São Paulo to building communities in Utah, every chapter of my career has been about one thing: connecting people, stories, and ideas that create impact.

Today, I lead sales and business development at Universal Media, the out-of-home company my late father-in-law founded. We’ve evolved it into a modern OOH + DOOH network — digital urban panels, EV charging totems, and large-format billboards — across lifestyle centers and niche markets nationwide.
My specialty? Building partnerships that help brands get remembered in the real world.

Beyond that, I’ve built platforms for women rewriting their stories after 40:
✨ AFTR — a newsletter (The AFTR Edit) + community (The AFTR Society) helping women redefine success, purpose, and power in midlife.
✨ Utah’s 40 Over 40 — a celebration of women leading, creating, and thriving in their next chapter. (From 2022 - 2025)

As a speaker and storyteller, I deliver keynotes, panels, and workshops on reinvention, visibility, and leadership, helping audiences see that reinvention isn’t the end of something, it’s the start of everything.

What ties it all together?
Amplification is power.

When brands light up digital screens, they cut through the noise.
When women over 40 claim their voices, they rewrite the narrative.

Different worlds. Same mission.
To help people, and ideas, get the stage they deserve.

👋 If you’re here because you:
• Want smarter ways to amplify your brand through OOH + DOOH media
• Need a keynote speaker on leadership, reinvention, or women 40+
• Or simply love connecting with people building their next chapter out loud

👉 You’re in the right place. Let’s connect!

💌 For OOH/DOOH placements: Email robyn@universalmediaus.com

💌 For speaking engagements: Email robyn@therobyncohen.com

🔗 Subscribe to The AFTR Edit: https://theaftredit.beehiiv.com/

🔗 Follow AFTR Media on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thisisaftr/

She was the first Black female billionaire in the United States.


But that's not the most interesting thing about Sheila Johnson.

What's more remarkable is what she did after the billion, after the exit, and after the unraveling.

She didn't retreat. She rebuilt.

In luxury hospitality, in professional sports ownership, in film, and in philanthropy. 

Entirely different arenas. No permission asked.

In this week's AFTR spotlight, we explore what it really looks like when reinvention isn't a pivot, it's authorship.

🔗 in comments.

🖤 Like, share, and follow if you're a woman over 40.

Robyn Cohen

Robyn is an accomplished professional with 15+ years' experience specializing in operations, business development and event production, having worked with startups, medium-sized businesses, as well as large corporations. 

Most notably, in 2017 she was hired as Managing Director at the Impact Hub Salt Lake, one of the city’s first co-working spaces. Within her first six months, she increased revenue by 60%, achieved 100% occupancy, and negotiated an exclusive partnership with Slack to do an experiential marketing campaign in Q4 of 2017.
 
Robyn has also been involved in the DE&I space for over a decade, primarily focused on elevating women. In 2008, she was one of the first Executive Director’s for Girls in Tech and helped launch their first 12 chapters nationally. She also founded their Los Angeles chapter in December 2008. In 2010 while living in Brazil, she launched a women-focused platform and events company, the first of its kind, that highlighted key female executives and entrepreneurs in Sao Paulo’s growing startup community. Upon moving to Salt Lake City in 2014, Robyn was one of the first executive committee members for Womenpreneurs and produced Women’s Week in 2017 and 2018 at the Impact Hub Salt Lake, featuring prominent women across the Salt Lake Valley in the areas of business, tech, politics and entrepreneurship.

Currently, she's the Founder of the W Collective, an events and culture consultancy and Co-Founder of Utah's 40 Women OVER 40. The inaugural 40 Women OVER 40 event will be held on Friday, September 9th from 11am - 2pm.

Originally from Toronto, Robyn has lived in two continents, three countries, and eight cities over the course of 25 years, bringing a unique and dynamic perspective to managing and growing businesses.
   
In her spare time, you can find her in the gym, in her Airstream traveling the country, and spending time with her furry child Asia and her husband Todd.

AFTR

SVP, Universal Media | Founder, AFTR | Keynote Speaker | Personal Brand Strategist | 30 Women to Watch | Helping women 40+ reinvent without apology

I'm building on March 8 because I don't want to be left behind in the world of AI.


To celebrate, Lovable will be completely free for 24 hours, powered by Anthropic. 

Plus, everyone who participates will get $100 in Anthropic API credits and $250 in Stripe fee credits.

Join me and builders around the world for SheBuilds on Lovable for International Women's Day!

For more information, click the link below.

#shebuilds #AI #IWD26

Lovable

Anthropic

Stripe

Life doesn’t expire at 30.
It doesn’t even peak at 40.


Sometimes life starts at 40.
Sometimes it starts at 50.
Sometimes it takes until 60 to finally feel like you’re standing in your own skin.

I’m in my 50s now. And if I look back honestly, I’ve had wins I never imagined I’d have. Speaking on stages I once felt intimidated by. Building businesses I didn’t know I was capable of building. Living in cities I once only dreamed about. Reinventing myself more than once.

Not massive, headline-making successes.
But deeply personal ones. The kind that shift your confidence from the inside out.

And I’ve also had failures. Real ones. The kind that sting. The kind that keep you up at night. The kind that make you question your judgment, your instincts, even your identity.

But here’s what I know now: every single one of those moments made me sharper, wiser, more discerning. They taught me who to trust. They taught me what to walk away from. They taught me how to rebuild.

If you’re 40 and feel behind, you’re not.
If you’re 50 and pivoting, you’re not crazy.
If you’re 60 and starting over, you’re not too late.

You are seasoned. You are informed. You are carrying decades of pattern recognition that your 25-year-old self simply did not have.

We are allowed to evolve. We are allowed to fail. We are allowed to succeed quietly. And we are absolutely allowed to start again.

Talk to me, if you’re over 40, what have been your wins, fails, and what are you starting from scratch? 

Hi 👋🏻, I’m Robyn Cohen. Follow me for stories and experiences of women over 40.

42 weeks ago I started a newsletter for women 40+.


It started as The After Party, because I wanted it to feel fun, celebratory, and a little irreverent. 

And it was. 

But somewhere around issue #36, I sat with it and realized something wasn’t quite right. 

The name, the look, the feel… it wasn’t fully telling the story I was trying to tell. 

So I did what I do. I went deep. 

A deep dive into AI, into brand strategy, into what this newsletter is actually about and who it’s really for. 

And The AFTR Edit was born, a total rebrand. A new name. A new visual identity. A whole new energy that finally felt aligned.

And then I did it again. 

This time with AI as my thought partner, I built a proper brand guide, one that works across the newsletter, across social, and has enough distinction to be unmistakably its own thing. 

Fonts. 
Colors. 
Voice. 
The whole picture.

Iteration three or four? Probably. But that’s what building something real looks like.

The AFTR Edit exists for women who are in the thick of this chapter. Not slowing down, not fading out, but editing their lives intentionally. 

And every week, that’s exactly what we talk about.

I’m curious, have you ever had to blow something up and rebuild it to make it right?

#pivot #reinvention #womenover40

Our portfolio is growing, and we’re officially expanding deeper into the Los Angeles market!


We’re excited to add Burbank Town Center and The Paseo to the Universal Media advertising network.

LA is a top U.S. DMA. It’s one of the most competitive, brand-saturated, and attention-fragmented markets in the country.

And that’s exactly why this matters.

In a world where AI is generating infinite content, physical presence becomes more valuable, not less.

Out-of-home media doesn’t get skipped. It doesn’t get blocked. It doesn’t get lost in an algorithm.

It’s real. It’s contextual. It lives where people actually are.

As more brands look for ways to stand out in an AI-heavy landscape, I believe premium, place-based media in high-traffic lifestyle centers will only become more powerful.

Grateful to keep building and growing. Onward! 🚀

Universal Media

They say, ‘No one is coming to save you.’


Which is true.

But you know what can save you?

Hard work.

So much of the success we see in the world comes from dedicated, relentless effort.

That’s it.

Nothing comes easy, even when perception fools you into thinking otherwise.

Sometimes that hard work takes a couple of years.

Sometimes it takes a decade.

But eventually, it pays off.

So keep going. The only version of you that doesn’t make it is the one that quits.

🖤 Follow me, Robyn Cohen, if you agree.

Yesterday, I celebrated International Women's Day by building.


Building on Lovable, of course. Why? Because it was free for the whole day!

I published my newsletter, worked out, and went to a coffee shop to start building.

I was in no mood to write a post about IWD.

We know what all the issues are and if anything, they're worse right now.

So, the best thing I can do for myself is learn as much about AI as I can.

Up to now, I have spent most of my time on ChatGPT. Then this year I started playing with Gemini 3, and now Claude, which I absolutely love.

But that's not enough.

So, as soon as I saw that Lovable was going to be free on IWD, it was no brainer. 

Not only did I build one site, I built two!

On the first site, I built a quiz and then in beehiiv, I created an API so when you put in your name and email to get your results, it captures it on beehiiv. Todd was really impressed that I did this all by myself.

On the second site, I was able to add a video for the hero, and a membership tier.

I'm hoping to continue building out these sites so they're fully working, and an extension of my AFTR brand.

The only way to create change is to be an example of that change and then bring other women along with you. And one of the best ways to do that is to leverage AI.

What did you do yesterday?

#IWD #AI #womenwhobuild

She built a $100 million fashion company from a bedroom eBay store, then lost it to bankruptcy.


This is Sophia Amoruso.

I've been a long-time fan of Sophia.

I still own a couple of pieces I bought when NastyGal was alive.

I read Girlboss and watched the Netflix mini-series.

I was there when she pivoted and launched Business Class.

Her VC firm Trust Fund has invested in some of the top companies right now — Liquid Death, Eight Sleep, Superhuman, and Lovable.

And she recently made a major life change and moved to London.

She is visionary, scrappy, resilient, vulnerable, honest, funny, and feels like your girlfriend from college.

In this week's The AFTR Edit, "On the Art of the Restart," she is the master of reinvention. Click the link below to read our Spotlight on the one and only Sophia Amoruso.

🖤 Like, share, and comment if you're a woman over 40.

Founder & Managing Partner at Trust Fund. Investor in Lovable, Superhuman, Eight Sleep, Liquid Death, Public.com, and 45+ startups. Built Nasty Gal to $100M+. Wrote #GIRLBOSS.

Business Class

Trust Fund

In this week's The AFTR Edit, we are featuring one of the most iconic Black women, I think, in the U.S., plus...


- Why last week was the real beginning of the year, the Lunar New Year, and why I’ve been celebrating it for almost 30 years.
- A spotlight on Sheila Johnson, who co-founded BET and is the CEO of Salamander Hotels and Resorts. She is also the first Black female billionaire.
- The latest news on health, wellness, tech, AI, money, etc for women over 40.
- And a curated list of products for women 40+.

This is just a taste of The AFTR Edit. Please support the newsletter by subscribing to it on beehiiv, link below. 

🖤 Like and share if you're a woman 40+!

Hey AFTR Queens! I’ve been celebrating the Lunar New Year for almost thirty years now, long before it became trendy or algorithm-friendly, and long be

The zero point reset

She left Wall St. and went all in on boring businesses, starting with a laundromat.


This is Codie A. Sanchez.

I have been following her for almost three years.

I was immediately intrigued when I heard she left a lucrative finance job to buy and run a laundromat. But that was only the beginning.

Now she owns close to 30 businesses ranging from laundromats to car washes, from window cleaning to property management.

Her businesses generate approximately $50 million annually.

She has a social media following of close to 10 million across platforms.

And she has almost one million subscribers for her Contrarian newsletter.

Her passion for boring businesses is perfectly timed with the rise of AI and the great wealth transfer.

Why start a business from scratch when you can own a cash-flowing business?

Almost 90% of startups fail.

But 3-4 million baby boomers are retiring every year for the next few years and 2-3 million of the businesses they own will be up for sale.

In this week's AFTR Edit, "What's Actually Worth Owning," Codie is the contrarian queen redefining entrepreneurship and encouraging all of us to be owners instead. Click the link below to read the full Spotlight on Codie.

🖤 Like, share, and comment if you're a woman over 40.

Investing millions in Main St businesses & teaching you how to own the rest | HoldCo, VC, Founder | NYT best-selling author

In this week's The AFTR Edit, it's all about the art of the restart.


No one embodies that better than the one and only Sophia Amoruso.

We also cover the latest news in health, money, culture, reinvention, and tech for women over 40.

And our curated list of products for the 40+ girlboss in your life.

A huge thank you to the almost 2000 people who are subscribed the The AFTR Edit version on LinkedIn. PLEASE take a moment to subscribe to the full version of this newsletter, link below.

🖤 Like, share and comment if you're a woman over 40.

I finally stopped calling it a setback. Somewhere between stepping away from something I helped build and sketching out the first real outline for AFT

On the Art of the Restart

I said I wasn't going to write about IWD, but here we go...


Another International Women's Day came and went with barely a whisper...

I've been doing the work since 2008.

-Launching the Girls in Tech Chapter in Los Angeles 2008
-Founding Girls + Women On It in Sao Paulo, Brazil in 2011
-Founding W Collective + Utah's 40 Over 40 in Salt Lake City in 2019 and 2022 respectively

Communities built across Los Angeles, San Francisco, São Paulo, and Salt Lake City. 

Dozens of events. Dozens of posts spotlighting women. Award galas. Partnerships with men who actually showed up.

And I'll say what I said recently, because I mean it:

I refuse to pretend that awareness alone is progress.

How many more posts about the data do we need? 

The stats. 
The figures. 
The same gaps we've been naming for decades. 

We know the numbers. We've always known the numbers.

And yet.

Yes, we still need more women in leadership. That's not up for debate. But even that, even getting the seat at the table, isn't enough anymore. 

We've seen what happens when women get the seat and the system doesn't change around them.

So maybe the question isn't how do we keep fighting the same fight.

Maybe it's what does the new fight look like?

We're living through a seismic shift with AI. The rules are being rewritten in real time. And I keep thinking, if we're going to rebuild anything, let's not rebuild the same broken structures with shinier tools.

I don't have the full answer. But I'm done pretending the old playbook is working.

The fight still matters. The form of the fight has to evolve.

What do you think the new fight looks like?

🖤 Like, share, and comment below if you're ready for a new fight

If we're going to double down on IRL as AI continues to evolve, what does that look like in the ad world?


Here's a global breakdown of ad spend as of 2024:

All digital (search, social, display, online video, retail media, etc.)
~60% of total ad spend

Linear TV (broadcast + cable)
~20%

Print (newspapers + magazines)
~5% or less and declining​

Audio (radio, streaming audio)
~5%​

Out-of-home (OOH + DOOH)
~5% globally, growing mainly via DOOH

Other (cinema, directories, misc.)
- Low single digits combined

I think the IRL for the ad world is OOH.

For those of us who work in the OOH world, we've been saying this forever.

“OOH can’t be skipped, blocked, or ignored.”

I think it's going to be more and more valuable as AI disrupts our online experience.

Have you seen some of the ads on Youtube? There are some obvious AI ads that are such a turn off. I look forward to clicking 'Skip' as soon as I can.

If you're a brand looking to make an impact in 2026, you cannot put all your eggs in the online/digital basket anymore.

Do you agree?

At 14, she founded her own foundation to educate girls on everything from climate change to menstruation. That was just the beginning.


Last week, TIME Magazine released their 2026 Women of the Year list.

I love how diverse the list is, featuring well known women such as Mel Robbins and Teyana Taylor, to women who are the lifeline in their community.

Here's the full list:
-Teyana Taylor
-Chloe Zhoe
-Mariska Hargitay
-Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone
-Amy Sherald
-Sister Norma Pimentel
-Reshma Saujani
-Lucy Liu
-Manoor Omer
-Brandi Carlisle
-Mel Robbins
-Dr. Reshma Kewalramani
-Isata Dumbuya
-Safeena Husein
-Sheryl Lee Ralph
-Kecia Steelman

By far the most impressive on the list in Manoor Omer. 

At 14, she founded Noor Foundation because she was not satisfied with a major NGO’s effort to educate girls about sexual violence.

Two years later, after learning that taxes imposed on sanitary products can add up to 40%, got her law degree, and a decade later took the government of Pakistan to court to challenge its “period tax.” 

Wow!

To view the full list and read all their stories, click the link below.

#womenoftheyear #leadership

TIME

Independent Fine Art Professional

Founder/CEO of Moms First | Founder of Girls Who Code | Host of My So-Called Midlife

#1 NYT Best Selling Author of The Let Them Theory | Host of Award-Winning The Mel Robbins Podcast | CEO, 143 Studios | Co-Founder, Pure Genius Protein

President & CEO of Ulta Beauty | On a mission to unleash possibilities for associates & guests through the power of beauty! | Visit us at ulta.com or in one of our 1,500+ stores across the U.S.

Some founders build products. 
Others build cultural shifts. She did both.


🖤 Beatrice Dixon — Intuitive. Fearless. Expansive.

Before The Honey Pot Company became a nationally recognized feminine wellness brand carried in major retailers across the country...

It was simply a solution to a problem she could not ignore. 

After years of struggling with chronic bacterial vaginosis and feeling frustrated by products that either masked symptoms or relied on synthetic ingredients,

Bea has openly shared that the original formula came to her in a dream.

A plant-based solution rooted in herbal healing and body literacy rather than shame or concealment.

It would have been easier to dismiss that moment. 

Easier to call it impractical. 

Easier to stay quiet in a category that had long been dominated by legacy corporations who treated vaginal health as something to package delicately and discuss indirectly.

Instead, she built a brand around saying the words out loud.

Founded in 2014, The Honey Pot entered a space that had been marketed for decades with euphemisms and pastel-coded messaging

It spoke plainly about pH balance, infections, plant medicine, and vaginal wellness without apology. 

That clarity was not accidental. 
It was strategic.

And it worked.

Under Bea’s leadership, the company scaled nationally, expanded into multiple product categories, and earned recognition across the beauty and consumer goods industries. 

She has been honored by organizations like Cosmetic Executive Women for her impact and leadership, a notable achievement in an industry that has not historically centered founders who look like her or speak as directly as she does.

But what makes Bea’s story resonate, isn’t just the revenue growth or the retail expansion. 

It’s the posture.

She built a multimillion-dollar brand in a category that had long relied on discomfort as a marketing tool. 

She reframed intimate health not as something embarrassing, but as something intelligent...

To read the full profile, subscribe here: 🔗 https://lnkd.in/gxVRQrsb

Co- Founder & CEO at The Honey Pot Company

The Honey Pot Company

We've been talking about the gender pay gap for decades.


And yet here we are, a new ADWEEK study of 900+ advertising professionals confirms it's still alive and well. Even after controlling for education, experience, hours worked, geography, and agency type.

5% pay gap for women. 8% for mothers.

Let that sink in. 

Women are doing everything "right," checking every box, closing every gap they can control, and the gap persists anyway. 

The researchers put it plainly: women are aggressively mitigating all the factors used to explain the disparity. 

It still exists.

Here's what's actually driving it:
- Managerial gatekeeping: When women raised pay concerns with managers, the conversation stalled. Managers would say they'd “look into it,” and nothing happened. Men in the same situations got direct answers.

- Homosocial reproduction: Men who reported discomfort working closely with women tended to earn more. Leaders reward people who remind them of themselves. Over time, those advantages compound.

Over a 25-year career, that 5% gap becomes $167,000 in lost earnings. For mothers? $271,000.

That's not a rounding error. That's a down payment. That's generational wealth.

So, what actually moves the needle? 

The study points to three things: 
1 - Pay band transparency
2 - Regular compensation audits 
3 - Escalation processes that don't dead-end at the direct manager level

Transparency matters. But more than that, accountability is what closes the gap.

What are you seeing in your industry? Are companies actually doing the work, or just talking about it?

#paygap #womenmedia Audrey Kemp

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