Kathy Savitt: From MWW to Boom Supersonic

THE ARCHITECTS · EVERYTHING-PR

Related: MikeWorldWide (MWW): PR Firm Profile · MWW archive · PR Leaders

A career profile of one of American marketing's most distinctive arcs — from MWW/Savitt to Amazon, American Eagle, Lockerz, Yahoo, STX Entertainment, Perch Partners, and Boom Supersonic.

Sources: STX Entertainment press release (September 11, 2015); Boom Supersonic corporate disclosures; Boom Overture and Boom XB-1 program filings; Volta Charging / Shell acquisition disclosures (March 2023); MWW Group / Interpublic Group acquisition disclosures (January 2000); Crunchbase; LinkedIn; public company filings.

Kathy Savitt is President and Chief Commercial Officer of Boom Supersonic, the Denver-based aerospace company developing the Overture supersonic airliner. She joined Boom in January 2021 and leads global commercial functions, including customer and passenger experience, sales, marketing, strategic partnerships, and external stakeholder initiatives.

Her career is one of the more distinctive arcs in American marketing and media leadership over the last thirty-five years — from independent PR-agency ownership in the 1990s through senior C-suite roles at Amazon, American Eagle, Yahoo, and STX Entertainment, into operational commercial leadership at a frontier aerospace company. The pattern itself is part of the story.

Origin: MWW/Savitt. Before she turned thirty, Savitt co-founded MWW/Savitt, an independent national marketing and PR firm operating as part of the MWW Group. The firm carried offices in Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, New Jersey, Washington DC, and Chicago, and specialized in the launch of new and disruptive companies and technologies — backed by a representative client roster that included Amazon, BlueNile, Delta Airlines, Microsoft, Starbucks, Disney, Apple, Hawaiian Airlines, the NBA, and the Seattle Supersonics. MWW Group was acquired by Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) in January 2000.

Amazon, American Eagle, Lockerz. Following the IPG transaction, Savitt joined Amazon.com as Vice President of Strategic Communications, Content, and Entertainment Initiatives. She moved next to American Eagle Outfitters as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, where she led the company's global brand marketing and its digital and e-commerce channels. In 2009 she founded Lockerz, an early social-commerce platform aimed at Generation Z, and served as its founding CEO. Lockerz was an early attempt to merge social media, e-commerce, and youth content — the convergence the broader industry would chase for the next decade.

Yahoo (2012–2015). Savitt joined Yahoo in 2012 under then-CEO Marissa Mayer as Chief Marketing Officer and Head of Global Media. She led brand marketing, product and performance marketing, audience engagement, and original editorial and video content across Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Sports — the properties at the center of Yahoo's then-strategy to compete in original digital content against an emerging set of streaming and platform peers.

STX Entertainment (October 2015–). In September 2015 STX Entertainment announced Savitt would join as President of Digital Media beginning October. STX, founded by Robert Simonds and backed by TPG Growth among others, was at the time positioning itself as the first new major Hollywood studio in more than two decades. Savitt was responsible for the studio's global digital content strategy, reporting to CEO Simonds with a dotted-line report to then-President Sophie Watts. STX subsequently went through major restructuring, including its 2020 merger with Eros International to form Eros STX, and Savitt's tenure there ended within that period.

Perch Partners and board work. After STX, Savitt served as a founding general partner at Perch Partners, a strategic business advisory and creative marketing firm working with Fortune 500 corporations and venture-backed startups. She served on the board of Volta Charging, the publicly traded electric-vehicle charging network (formerly NYSE: VLTA), which was acquired by Shell (NYSE: SHEL) on March 31, 2023. She has also served as a member of the board of directors of Alaska Air Group.

Boom Supersonic (January 2021–present). Savitt's current role at Boom Supersonic places her at the commercial center of one of the most ambitious frontier aerospace projects in the United States. Boom is developing the Overture, a Mach 1.7 supersonic airliner currently planned for first flight in 2028 and type certification in 2029. The company's XB-1 "Baby Boom" demonstrator made its first flight on March 22, 2024 and was retired in February 2025. In January 2022, Boom announced a $60 million grant from the U.S. Air Force's AFWERX program; in July 2022, the company announced a partnership with Northrop Grumman to develop a special-mission variant for the U.S. government and allies. Savitt's portfolio at Boom covers customer experience, sales and marketing, strategic partnerships, sustainability positioning, and external stakeholder communications.

The pattern. Savitt's career describes a now-recognizable shape among senior American marketing and media executives: agency origin, brand-side C-suite, startup founding role, large-platform CMO, then operational commercial leadership at the frontier of a category. The companies she has led communications and commercial functions for — Amazon in its retail-emergence years, American Eagle in its mid-2000s peak, Yahoo in the Mayer era, STX as a Hollywood challenger, Boom as a supersonic-aviation aspirant — together map the major commercial bets of the last three decades of American consumer business.

Education. Savitt holds a bachelor's degree in history and government from Cornell University.