sEEcret sauce: EE’s Ingredients for Success – Spotlight on Bronwyn Breitner

Bronwyn Breitner, the big and bold thinker of EE

This blog post is part of our sEEcret sauce blog series highlighting some of our most integral Emily’s Entourage team members. The goal is to identify the “secret sauce” that makes each of them so incredible and key to EE’s success, and to inspire others to leverage their inner “secret sauce” too. To read the first post in this series click here.

If you’re reading this, it’s likely you’ve heard about the incredible success of the first annual Exclusive Evening with Emily’s Entourage in New York. It’s been nearly six weeks since the event and it’s still crazy to think that such a grassroots, bootstrapping, dizzyingly energetic, volunteer-led evening raised over $110,000. While it’s certainly a testament to great teamwork, it’s an even greater testament to tireless and charismatic leadership.

That’s why we at EE owe a huge debt of gratitude to the rockstar (and honorary big sister to Emily!) at the heart of it all — Bronwyn Breitner. As event co-chair, Bronwyn Breitner dreamed up this crazy idea and put the team on her back, bringing the whole committee across the finish line.

In addition to the weekly in-person meetings, there were countless phone calls that went until all hours of the night, including a few that co-chair Coby Kramer-Golinkoff fell asleep on! #hush) and an infinite number of emails, coordination, daring asks, detail planning, middle of the night panics, and so much more. Bronwyn was the driving force behind it all

Bronwyn credits fate for her getting her involved with Emily’s Entourage from the beginning. We credit her remarkable leadership and talent, infectious energy, charm, and enormous heart. After all, Bronwyn has been playing a crucial role in Emily’s life since the very beginning. It was Bronwyn and her brother Cameron to whom Emily took her first steps as a one-year-old, and Emily’s been looking up to her honorary big sister Bronwyn ever since.

And so, nearly five years ago, as they were preparing to launch Emily’s Entourage it will come as no surprise that Bronwyn and her husband Luigi were among the very first people that the Kramer-Golinkoff family went to as a sounding board for brainstorming and creative inspiration.  

Things have come a long way since then! Bronwyn has watched with awe as the organization has grown from the ground up, before her very eyes. After last winter’s philadelphia gala, she mentioned the idea of a New York event to Coby, Emily’s brother. Little did she know what she had gotten herself into!

The wine and cheese night with maybe 100 guests she initially envisioned quickly blossomed into a 300+ person gala with a trapeze artist, raffle, online auction, and more. Clearly, it took a lot of magic to make the night happen.

Bronwyn gives a lot of the credit for this magic to her husband Luigi, her own “sEEcret Sauce.” Luigi had to step it up at home and at the office where they both work in order for Bronwyn to devote time to EE. “He honestly didn’t complain once”, Bronwyn tells us, “because he knows how much I care about Emily and EE and also, he could see that I was enjoying it so much.” The entire event committee owes a big thanks to Luigi. We couldn’t have done it without him!

The whole experience, Bronwyn says, helped her learn so much more intimately about Emily’s Entourage. “I learned more about what they are doing that is so badass in the scientific research world and understand better now why they are getting the kind of support and recognition that they are.” Thanks to Bronywn, Emily’s Entourage is doing even more “badass” work

Thank you, Bronwyn, for being the ultimate badass, the most spectacular and tireless leader, the mastermind behind it all, the girl crush of every member of the EENY committee, and the best big sis in the universe.  Our sEEcret is official out! We lovEE you, Bwyn!!!