Alumni Share Their Entrepreneurial Journeys at Women’s Leadership Network Event

(L to R) Entrepreneurs Katya Sverdlov ’12 and Rachel Foster ’94, moderator and Adjunct Professor Olivera Medenica ’00, Meeka Bondy ’94, and Dean David Meyer at the Women’s Leadership Network on April 22, 2025.

Creating your own business requires collaboration, mentorship, resilience and, of course, capital, but the satisfaction inherent in the work makes the venture worthwhile, according to alumni panelists who shared inspiring stories about entrepreneurship at a Women’s Leadership Network event Tuesday evening. 

The event, “Esquire to Entrepreneur: How to Take Your Brooklyn Law School Degree and Turn to Entrepreneurship,” kicked off with Women’s Leadership Circle (WLC) Chair Meeka Bondy ’94 introducing the moderator and panelists. She described the mission of WLC, which was formed seven years ago and creates programming for the larger Women’s Leadership Network, as having three parts. 

“One is to put on great quality programming which inspires and informs people,” Bondy said. “The second is to bring together a great community of supportive women and alumni and lawyers and non-lawyers who are friends of Brooklyn Law School in a very mentoring kind of environment. And the third is philanthropy, to give back to the next generation of law leaders from our school and beyond.”  

Moderated by Adjunct Professor Olivera Medenica ’00, an equity partner at Dunnington Bartholow & Miller, the panel featured two alumni who have leveraged their Brooklyn Law School degrees to launch businesses. Katya Sverdlov ’12, a principal at Sverdlov Law, is also the cofounder and CEO of JelikaLite, a venture-backed, med-tech company developing AI-powered therapeutic solutions for children with autism and neurological conditions. Rachel Foster ’94 is the founder and president of Heights Advisors, a private-sector real estate development firm; the cofounder and chair of World Without Exploitation (WorldWE), a national coalition of almost 200 organizations dedicated to combating sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation; and a cofounder of Brooklyn Cat Cafe, a pet adoption center and community space.   

Transitioning from Law to Entrepreneurship 

The two women got into law and entrepreneurship through different paths, but both were driven by the desire to help others. Foster was inspired to go to Brooklyn Law School after working as a community organizer with domestic violence victims and realizing a law degree would make her a more effective advocate. After graduating, she worked as an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights and at Brooklyn Legal Services. The businesses she later started, though, are an amalgam of her interests and passions.  

She grew up in a Park Slope brownstone and was raised by two parents who were steeped in the arts and the surrounding community. Her mother, a very important career mentor, was a social worker who was deeply involved in the community. Her father, an architect, inspired her interest in interior design and renovation.  

“I had always been on that pathway of working with women, and particularly with women who were marginalized, who don't have voice, don't have power,” said Foster, whose early work was with HIV-positive women during the height of the AIDS epidemic. This desire to help women led her to create both the first ground-up shelter for survivors of domestic violence along with their pets, and two transitional family shelters, housing more than 500 as part of Heights Advisors, the real estate development firm she started with her husband. “It was very important to both of us to do social impact development work, and from the beginning we knew that would be a piece of it,” Foster said. They got their real estate business off the ground by completing gut renovations of Brooklyn brownstones they purchased, and they now develop properties throughout New York and Pennsylvania. Her lifelong love of animals inspired both the pet-friendly shelter she created and her role in cofounding the Brooklyn Cat Cafe.  

Having a law degree helped Foster create businesses, she said, because it provided her with the skills to be able to read and comprehend regulations, to write succinctly, and to advocate on behalf of others. “If you’re going to make a point, you need to know how to support it, and, whether it’s in speaking or writing, how to make a solid argument and also support it,” she said.  

Sverdlov had previously worked as an investment banker on Wall Street for 12 years before the 2008 financial crisis prompted her decision to go to law school, initially in the hopes of serving as an advocate for foster children. Her interest in families and planning led her to estate law.  

“I worked for a couple of years for a law firm that did estate planning, and now for the past 10 years, I have my own estate planning law firm,” Sverdlov said. That work informed her about the struggles that parents of autistic children who need assistance well into adulthood face when planning for their futures. She cofounded the medical device company JelikaLite, with a psychologist friend who had been researching ways to treat children with autism.  

“There are no medications. There are no medical devices that are FDA-approved to treat children with autism,” Sverdlov said. “I knew the devastation these families face.”