# Roxanne Petraeus

> Roxanne Bras Petraeus is the co-founder and CEO of Ethena, a New York compliance-training startup that turns the most ignored hour at work, the annual harassment course, into something people actually finish. A Rhodes Scholar, Harvard ROTC graduate, and U.S. Army combat veteran who deployed to Afghanistan before consulting at McKinsey, she launched Ethena in 2019 with engineer Anne Solmssen and has raised roughly $50 million, including a $30 million Series B in 2022, to make compliance modern, funny, and forgiving rather than fear-based.

- **Role:** Co-Founder & CEO at Ethena
- **Organizations:** Ethena, McKinsey & Company, U.S. Army
- **From:** Texas, United States
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.A. in Economics (Harvard ROTC), Harvard University, Master's in International Relations (Rhodes Scholar), University of Oxford
- **Known for:** Rhodes Scholar., U.S. Army combat veteran with an airborne deployment to Afghanistan., Co-founded and scaled Ethena, raising approximately $50M including a $30M Series B in 2022.

## Career timeline

- **2007** — Harvard ROTC cadet; commissions into the U.S. Army.
- **~2008-2014** — Serves roughly six years as a U.S. Army officer, including airborne training and a combat deployment to Afghanistan.
- **post-Army** — Rhodes Scholar at Oxford; earns a master's in international relations.
- **pre-2019** — Consultant at McKinsey & Company, leading large-scale transformations and organizational-design work.
- **2019** — Co-founds Ethena with engineer Anne Solmssen to modernize compliance training.
- **2022** — Closes a $30M Series B led by Lachy Groom; total funding reaches roughly $50M.
- **2025** — Continues to lead Ethena as it expands its compliance platform and adds AI-powered tooling.

## Achievements

- Rhodes Scholar.
- U.S. Army combat veteran with an airborne deployment to Afghanistan.
- Co-founded and scaled Ethena, raising approximately $50M including a $30M Series B in 2022.
- Built a customer base including Pinterest, Zendesk, Notion, Figma, Netflix, Zoom, and Carta.
- Author and frequent speaker on compliance, leadership, and workplace culture.

## Latest updates

- **2025-02** — Profiled by HR Brew on her mission to make compliance training less boring and more memorable.
- **2025-04** — Active on LinkedIn hiring for senior roles, including a Head of Compliance, as Ethena scales.

## Links

- Website: https://goethena.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roxanne-bras-petraeus-2292b8109
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/RoxannePetraeus
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/goethena/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/roxanne-petraeus
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-03