Joan DeGennaro

Joan joined Scale in 2025 to manage community and events. Previously, she worked directly with startups to plan and execute high-impact events to achieve marketing, recruiting, and community building goals. She spent five years at Y Combinator working on Startup School, Co-Founder Matching, and events to support early-stage founders. Before that, she held roles at Deepgram and Oscar Health, managing operations and partnerships. Her entry point into the startup world was as a founder in Y Combinator’s W16 batch, where she led a nonprofit focused on sanitation access in rural India. She studied at Northwestern University and lives in SF, despite strongly identifying with the tri-state area (CT, NJ, NY).