Entrepreneur. CEO. Speaker. Researcher. Writer. Producer. Tap Dancer.

Katlyn Grasso is the founder and CEO of GenHERation. In her role as CEO, she has created GenHERation Discovery Days, the GenHERation Summer Leadership Series, developed original GenHERation webisodes, and has grown the GenHERation community to more than 89,000 members. During the summer of 2016, GenHERation’s Discovery Days tour consisted of 9 trips across 5 cities with 200 female executives that provided young women the opportunity to visit the most innovative companies in America, including Comcast NBCUniversal, Google, Facebook, Twitter, TOMS, the U.S. State Department, NASA, J.P. Morgan, Tracy Anderson, and the New York Yankees. She is a recent graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania where she received a B.S. in Economics with concentrations in finance and strategic globalization. She is one of the inaugural recipients of the President’s Engagement Prize created by Dr. Amy Gutmann at the University of Pennsylvania. This award provides graduating seniors with $150,000 to develop innovative projects that have the potential to change the world. Katlyn is a Seventeen Power Girl and was also named to the magazine’s list of “Real Girls Doing Amazing Things."

Katlyn was selected to participate in the Millennial Trains Project, a cross country trip for 25 social innovators from around the world sponsored by NBCUniversal. During the journey, she was named one of the “5 Innovators to Look Out for on the Millennial Trains Project” by Innovator’s Peak. After the trip, she was awarded an Impact Grant from NBCUniversal to produce webisodes of the GenHERation Summer Leadership Series as one of the most innovative, socially-impactful projects that came out of this year’s journey. She was featured on the cover of Philly Biz Magazine as the youngest woman on the “Women to Watch List.”  Katlyn is a serial entrepreneur who has started two nonprofit organizations, the dance exercise program Tap for Tots, and a technology commercialization venture. She also serves on the advisory board for the Center of the Advancement of Girls at the Agnes Irwin School, the Wharton Innovation Fund Selection Committee, and has been a member of Dr. Gutmann's President's Engagement Prize Selection Committee. Katlyn is a frequent television and radio contributor and has appeared on CNBC, NBC New York City, NBC Washington, D.C., NBC Philadelphia, SiriusXM Radio, CBS Radio Los Angeles, and Kiss 104.1. Originally from Hamburg, New York, Katlyn is now a bicoastal entrepreneur spending her time between New York City, Philadelphia, and California.

During her time at Penn, she was the Managing Practice Leader of the Wharton Small Business Development Center (SBDC). She was responsible for managing the daily operations of the High Impact Growth Consulting Program, which included overseeing the work of more than 60 undergraduate and MBA students and 80 cases per year. Within an 18 month period, she helped the SBDC team generate $30 million in revenue and new investments for their clients. She was a founding team member of the SBDC’s Accelerator Program and served as the CEO of the Women’s Vertical. In recognition of her contributions to the Wharton SBDC, Katlyn received the 2014 Wells Fargo Distinguished Leadership Award.

In addition to her work at the Wharton SDBC, Katlyn served as the Co-President of Wharton Ambassadors, a member of the Wharton Venture Initiation Program, a Neff Entrepreneurial Intern Fellow, a Wharton Peer Advising Fellow, a Turner Social Impact Society Intern Fellow, a National Student Ambassador for Women in Toys, and a member of Soundworks Tap Factory.  She was honored with several awards at Penn, including the 2015 Wharton Vice Dean’s Award of Service, 2015 Wharton Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award, 2015 Penn Student Award of Merit, 2014 Wharton Venture Award, 2014 Snider Seed Award, 2014 Social Impact Experience Grant Award, 2014 Trustees’ Council of Penn Women Grant Award, 2014 Women in Toys Scholarship recipient for being a promising female student entrepreneur, 2013-2015 Wharton Innovation Fund Grant, 2013 Wharton Social Impact Initiative Research Grant, and the 2013 Herbert S. Steuer Memorial Prize as one of the most outstanding Wharton students in scholarship, personality, and leadership.

Katlyn is an avid researcher and has conducted international research on girl’s leadership development. She has interviewed more than 1,500 girls, 200 executives, and 100 educators across all 50 states, 9 countries, and 4 continents. She created the Leadership Camp for Girls 2013 to test her research hypotheses. As a recipient of the 2014 Wharton SIRE Grant, she studied how girls’ consumption of media influences leadership development in the 21st century. She completed an independent study with Wharton’s Vice Dean of Social Impact to analyze female leadership development through a literature review. In spring 2015, she worked with Wharton’s Management Department to organize an analysis of the global venture capital industry.

Her work has been featured across national media outlets, including Seventeen, Forbes, NBCUniversal, The Huffington Post, HuffPost Live, Yahoo Travel, BizWomen, Penn Current, Penn Gazette, Philadelphia Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly.com, The Daily Pennsylvanian, Innovator’s Peak, Idea Forge, Technically Philly, Technically DC, DCInno, The Build, Chatting with the Experts, Salon, Washington Times, Miami Herald, Catalyst, The WALK Magazine, CollegeFashionista, Neon Tommy, Macaroni Kid, Poets & Quants, Knowledge@Wharton High School, Wharton International Business Review, and Wharton Magazine.