BETH (SAUNDERS) MAZZA
| Company Founded: | The Female Maverick | Graduation Year: | 1989 |
| Title: | Co-Founder | Degree: | BBA, Finance |
| Location: | Chicago, IL | Residence Hall: | Walsh |
Beth Mazza's childhood in Chicago was filled with the warmth of a close-knit family. Both sets of her grandparents were Italian immigrants, and her best friends were her cousins. Family gatherings were a constant, whether for holy days, holidays, birthdays, or graduations. However, when it came time to choose a college, a small bit of tension arose when her grandparents declared, “Girls don’t go away for college.”
But this didn’t deter Mazza. She applied to and was accepted by the University of Notre Dame, where the student body at the time was seventy-five percent male and twenty-five percent female. She didn't give it much thought until her first football game as a freshman.
“I overheard an alumnus say to his friend, ‘Can you believe they let women in?’ I was surprised by the remark,” Mazza recalls.
Mazza earned a degree in Finance, but when she began interviewing for jobs, she found that merchant banking and venture firms weren’t hiring female associates. Instead, she accepted a position at a steel company, working in investment management for their pension fund. However, the role turned out to be more administrative, helping people with their retirement benefits.
“It was a bait and switch,” she says ruefully. “So I left.”
Her next role was with a small venture capital firm that acquired distressed assets from startups. This position suited Mazza much better, as it allowed her to work closely with entrepreneurs. She gained valuable insight into the challenges of startups, the critical importance of capital, and, most importantly, how to handle stressful business situations from various perspectives—human, corporate, and regulatory.
After a few years at the venture firm, Mazza realized something crucial: “I wasn’t very employable due to my inability to blindly follow orders and accept the status quo. I started thinking it made better sense for me to work for myself, even though I knew very little about running a company.”
Meanwhile, Mazza got married, started a family (she has four children), and attended DePaul University at night, earning her law degree in Securities Law in 2000.
The legal knowledge she gained dovetailed nicely with her work at the venture firm. In 1999, she co-founded Ashton Partners with a male colleague, specializing in corporate financial relations for public companies. Mazza used her legal and writing skills to help corporations navigate sensitive situations ranging from initial public offerings to SEC reporting and crisis communications.
Mazza soon found that starting a business was the easy part; the challenge was securing clients. “I cold-called for two years,” she says. “I found out the best time to get a decision-maker on the phone was after six p.m., when the admins had left for the day.”
Her persistence paid off. By 2009, Mazza and her partner had grown the business to $7 million in revenue with more than 50 employees. They eventually sold the business to FTC Consulting, where Mazza continued to work for several years.
Reflecting on this milestone, Mazza says, “Surpassing $1 million in revenue was a huge turning point for me. It made me feel like I could do anything.”
By 2015, Mazza was ready to move on and launched another consulting firm, this time with a former employee, Victoria Sivrais, as her co-founder. They started Clermont Partners, a woman-owned consultancy specializing in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) communications and strategy, as well as investor and transaction communications. Like Ashton Partners, they advised C-suites and boards of directors of public companies, often in male-dominated arenas.
The co-founders bootstrapped the new consultancy. Mazza used money from the Ashton exit, while Sivrais took loans from a family member and her 401(k), even using her credit card at one point to meet payroll.
“I asked Victoria why she did that,” says Mazza. “Victoria said it never crossed her mind that we’d fail.”
Mazza's intention was to build an ESG practice, a niche area at the time. The first year brought zero sales and 200 rejections. Finally, after 18 months, things turned around. Corporations began seeking their guidance on ESG, and for the next nine to 12 months, Clermont Partners had no competitors. ESG became the fastest-growing part of their business.
One reason Clermont Partners was so successful was the strong relationship between Mazza and Sivrais. Both married with large families, they supported each other. “If one of us had a sick child, the other would pick up the client meeting. If we couldn’t handle another big client, we moved on. We put in weird, long hours. We were each other’s work wife.”
When the business reached $8 million in annual revenue in 2022, Mazza and Sivrais decided to sell. “ESG had peaked, and we realized this was as good as it was going to get. We decided to sell, and there was a bidding war for Clermont. Both of us stayed a year with the new owners before retiring. I was 55, and Victoria was 45.”
Mazza’s retirement lasted five months. In June 2024, she and Sivrais launched a new media content company, The Female Maverick, as a resource for women entrepreneurs.
“I hated the name,” Mazza admits, “but we got great feedback on it. I realized it worked because women do things differently. Also, we always felt like outsiders. Our success was life-changing, and we want other women to crack the seven-figure ceiling and change their lives, too.”
The vision for The Female Maverick is to be a bold roadmap for ambitious career women—a "how to" guide with unfiltered advice, tactical plans, and visionary inspiration from experienced women like Mazza and Sivrais, who have taken the same plunge. The goal is to be a big-idea resource rather than operational support.
“There is definitely a market for 'how to be an entrepreneur' content for women by women,” Mazza says. “The majority of content out there—podcasts, newsletters, and social sites—is created by men in their 20s and 30s and largely for male entrepreneurs. What women need most is for women entrepreneurs who have realized success to listen to them, identify the holes in their ideas, and give them a hand up and over the hurdles.”
The Female Maverick is not a post-retirement, time-filling gig. The partners are bootstrapping the company, using funds from their previous exit, so there’s no pressure to be cash flow positive immediately. They have the luxury to evolve their brand and approach based on how women respond to their offerings. Monetization will come from paid mentoring, sponsorships of their newsletter and podcast, and potentially a future exit. Mazza points to the Morning Brew as an example—a business-themed digital newsletter that exited for $50 million.
Although The Female Maverick is still very young, much of the conversation in mentoring sessions has centered around what Mazza calls “mom-preneurship.”
“Women want to be entrepreneurs, but they also want to be moms and caregivers. I have four kids and Victoria has five. We figured it out, but it’s messy. So our content focuses on the nitty-gritty 'how-to' stuff and the softer family side of things—very real, very tactical, and very believable because we’ve done it. We can help them realize their dreams faster and with fewer mistakes.”
One big idea in the works for The Female Maverick is the “Maverick 50.” The intent is to create an intense, almost bootcamp-style mentoring program for women entrepreneurs who want a higher level of coaching from a team of curated advisors. It will be a paid membership with an application process for women in specific industries, such as software and professional services, where Mazza and Sivrais have firsthand experience. Scholarships will be available. Given how difficult it can be for women to raise venture capital, Maverick 50 will also serve to introduce members to investors. Mazza anticipates launching the new program soon.
The challenges Mazza has faced throughout her career are not unique. “The path to securing venture capital is not always clear or easy for women entrepreneurs. We’re still the outsiders looking in. Fortunately, it’s starting to change, but it’s not easy. The other challenge is with ourselves. Women often have this voice in our heads that makes excuses about why we can’t do something. ‘I want to be a mom. I can’t start a company.’ We need to turn that off. Women need to get rid of the mom guilt. We also need to stop equating corporate jobs with security. They aren’t the security blanket they once were. Running your own company lets you call the shots.”
She adds, “Women also need to imagine themselves as vest-wearing bros. Guys don’t have thoughts that they can’t do something. They just do it.”
Mazza says her biggest career win to date was selling Clermont Partners for the highest multiple ever seen in the consulting world—five times revenue. “Throughout my career, I had to learn to deal with the male-dominated C-suite. I didn’t have complete confidence until I was 52 and we exited Clermont. Cracking seven figures early in my career was a life-changer, but this was a BIG deal.”
When asked what advice she’d give to women who want to be entrepreneurs but find themselves sidelined by self-doubt, fear, or conflict about balancing a career and family, Mazza offered this:
“This is how you get the confidence to do it. Spend a couple of years in your twenties learning. The smarter first job is often with a smaller company where you’re in the room where decisions are made. Watch and learn how business is done. The mystique will be removed. With each job, you will learn something you can deploy when you start your own company.”
She adds, “Entrepreneurship doesn’t mean you give up family or being a mom. You can do both.”