Heather Mackenzie (She/Her)

Heather is a startup native and consumer digital transformation expert in e-commerce, strategic content, product development, and brand building. Her leadership in these areas led her last startup BestReviews (where she was employee 4) to grow 50x in four years, resulting in a majority acquisition by Tribune Publishing (NYSE: TPCO) in 2018 for $110 million, and full acquisition by Nexstar (NASDAQ: NXST) in 2020 for $160 million.

After her exit from BestReviews in 2020, Heather joined Hello Divorce two months into a planned year-long vacation from the start-up world because she was convinced that the legal world is one of the only things left that truly needed disrupting. Since her expertise (obsession) is making complex, frustrating processes easier – and even enjoyable – for consumers, Heather has taken the lead of the product, customer service, marketing, and content teams to not only cover every touch point consumers have with the company, but to create true economies of scale.

While getting her Master’s Degree from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, she pivoted from a traditional news career to join the school’s (then-new) tech and entrepreneurship program, focusing on ways to blend tech and content to build amazing consumer experiences. Even at that early stage, Heather was clearly cut for the scrappy world of startups – she famously taught herself to code because she wasn’t happy with the clunky WYSIWYG web editors of the early ‘00s – and she’s taken that mindset with her to Hello Divorce.

At Hello Divorce, Heather relentlessly pursues the goal of gaining and keeping consumer trust. In her first year alone, she lead the complete digital transformation of the site, implemented scale through technology and systems across teams, added new products and services that extended the company’s reach, and transformed the approach of not only the legal product but the huge amount of consumer content Hello Divorce provides to users.

Heather holds a B.A. in History and American Studies from the University of Notre Dame and a M.S. in Digital Media from Northwestern University. In 2017, she was chosen to be a member of the prestigious Council of 100 for executive leadership at Northwestern, where she helps with the philanthropy of the school through mentorship and growth for future women leaders. She is also a relatively decent ukulele, piano, and electric bass player, and has recently taken up improv.