March 10, 2026 • Posted by Design Bay Area
A new article in Forbes highlights 4 women in the Baukunst Collective who are defining their own style of leadership, investment, and mentorship. Kate McAndrew of Baukunst, Laura Modi of Bobbie, and Amy Kiska and Molly Morse of Recess all feature in a story about a “reach-back” model of leadership, each building something that makes the next woman’s path a little less impossible.
Modi, for her part, treats mentorship as a structural obligation. “It’s a responsibility to get to a certain place as a leader and then be directly or indirectly mentoring the next generation,” she told me. She is candid about the fact that mentoring others is also an exercise in continued personal growth. “There’s a dual mentorship that comes with this,” she says. “Growing a next generation of leadership, where does leadership stop? I don’t believe there is a top.”
Kiska describes looking up to Modi during her own pregnancy, remembering a video of Modi doing lunges while pitching to investors. “I remember looking at that, being like, I can do this,” Kiska says. Then Modi invested in Recess.
The piece traces a lineage of investment and mentorship that runs through our community: Kate backed Laura’s company Bobbie, which became one of the fastest-growing entrants into the U.S. formula market in decades; Laura in turn invested in Recess, Amy and Molly’s startup building marketplace infrastructure for children’s enrichment. Author Alli Kushner frames it as compounding leadership. For us, it’s part of the Baukunst Collective’s eco-centric approach to building. We’re honored to be part of a community recognized for its ethos of interdependence.
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