Catherine Merritt

Member Since 2022

Catherine Merritt

CEO

Spool

Chicago Area

Catherine is a serial entrepreneur, an investor, an activist and a champion of women and underrepresented leaders within the venture capital and startup space. As a woman who grew her career in the big marketing agency world, Catherine left that behind to build someone on her own. Working with female-founded startups, Catherine launched a consultancy that created access to investment and brands for emerging startups. Her consultancy quickly grew and Catherine evolved it into what is now Spool, the fastest growing agency, globally. Spool works with CPG brands, organizations, startups and companies to support their growth and promote the value they serve communities across the world. In less than four years, Spool has seen exponential growth and begun parlaying revenue into VCs and companies as part of Spool’s growing venture arm. Currently Catherine is leading an SPV for Supply Change Capital, with the intention of bringing 25 new female and/or underrepresented investors into the VC space. Spool was named one of PRNews Top 100 Agency Elite in 2021 and 2022, and Spool was awarded as a finalist for New PR Agencies of the Year from PRovoke Media. Additionally, Spool was shortlisted for two 2022 Sabre Awards categories - Best Agency Disruptors and Innovator of the Year. Catherine herself won the Silver Award for Outstanding Female Entrepreneur from the Stevie’s Women in Business Awards in 2020 and was an honoree for Top Women in PR by PRNews in 2020. Catherine and her husband Ian live in Evanston, just outside Chicago, with their two boys, Teddy and Archie.


SKILLS

  • Venture Capital
  • Marketing
  • Communications

RECENT CONTENT

March 24th, 2023

Why entrepreneurs need to talk more about the mess of being in The Middle

In the spirit of me being me—as someone who is smack in the middle of "The Middle"—let me tell you what it's like from where I sit.

March 23rd, 2023

16 experts share hard lessons that have improved their business

Sometimes, the biggest business challenges can yield the most valuable lessons for future success.

September 22nd, 2022

16 lessons leaders have learned from a crisis 

Your ability to weather a huge storm, in the marketplace, may also increase the growth potential of your business success down the line.

September 9th, 2022

15 ways for bootstrapped startups to reward top performers

Even if you're self-funded, there are affordable ways to recognize and reward your team for a job well done.


COMPANY INFO

Spool

Spool is the fastest growing PR agency in the world because we deliver exceptional work for our clients and we put our people before profits. Partnership: we work with our clients in a true partnership capacity and constantly bring forward proactive, business-driving ideas and strategies to support our clients' growth and success. How? We embrace a business and entrepreneurial mindset which means we push ideas further, we understand our clients' industries, competitors and deliver opportunities to push them ahead of the pack. We also believe in an empathetic and people-focused workplace, which means we support our employees, we promote full lives outside of work and we believe Spool's success should be everyone else's' success who made it possible. Spool was founded by a cohort of media and agency ex-pats back in 2018 and was launched with the belief in a new agency model for today’s companies and brands. So we set out to build it. Three years later, we've grown, we've launched dozens of brands, we've launched an investment arm and we've given back to our community. And we're just getting started.


AREA OF FOCUS

  • Public Relations
  • Marketing
  • Impact Investing

INDUSTRY

Marketing & advertising