Team
Nicole Vilas Boas
CoFounder of Wotter. Swim athlete, Class of 2020 high school graduate (now a Freshman at UNC) and aspiring SNL cast member. Niki is in the everyday mix at Wotter HQ; calling design shots, making adjustments to the strategic direction of the brand and dreaming about the next wave of product innovations to bring girls like her more confidence on deck. As a student leader in diversity advocacy and National Student Diversity Leadership Conference Alumni 2018, Niki believes the benefits of swimming (along with all other team sports) should be accessible to everyone regardless of shape, size, race, creed or gender and is passionate about finding ways for Wotter to support making swimming a sport for every girl.Becca Segal
CoFounder of Wotter. Swim athlete, Class of 2020 high school graduate (now taking a gap year and starting UNC next Fall), 2019 National Speech and Debate finalist and future POTUS. Becca brings powerful leadership and a passion for Wotter's female empowerment mission to the organization. Becca infuses energy into every aspect of the company, always seeking opportunities to build success and drive action that will bring Wotter closer to the girls it is designed to serve. Becca, 2017 alumni of the National Student Diversity Leadership Conference, shares Niki's passion about bringing swimming to every girl. Becca, Niki and swim athletes like them are the inspiration behind Wotter's Girlboss Revolution, the Wotter product line and its mission driven brand.
Kate Cooley
CoFounder of Wotter. Mother of Niki, marketing professional, world traveler and lover of good people. Wotter was conceived when Niki and Becca were discouraged by selections in a gear and apparel market wholly owned by "Big Swim". Knowing that swimmers deserved high quality choices that addressed both style and high-performance function, Kate assisted the girls as they set out to build something unique, empowering, and inherently good. Kate is a former NASA Engineer and MBA graduate of The Ohio State University. She has devoted most of her career to the creation of mission driven brands - blockbuster to boutique - and takes great delight in shepherding the teen cofounders of Wotter through their entrepreneurial journey.
JR DeSouza
An international swim champion* from Brazil and Olympic participant in the 1992 Summer Olympics, JR brings expert swim counsel, entrepreneurial acumen and radiant California sunshine to the creative team at Wotter. JR is a marketing executive living in Los Angeles, California. His most recent role was as executive director of global merchandising for DreamWorks. JR is the founder of Outex underwater camera gear and an entrepreneur of serial significance.
Ben Swift
Ben is a former high school and college swimmer who brings a tech-saavy swimmer's mind to the Wotter collaboration. He is a force of good in the world and is passionate about supporting the swim community. Ben is a 2007 graduate of University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign where he studied cellular and molecular biology. He is an accomplished entrepreneur and cofounder of Unified Imaging, recently acquired by Rev-Optix, the ECP services company behind Revolution EHR.
*In 1993 JR broke two World Records on short course. On July 7, the Brazil team, composed of Fernando Scherer, Teofilo Ferreira, José Carlos Souza and Gustavo Borges broke the world record in 4×100-metre freestyle with a time of 3:13.97, which belonged to Sweden since March 19, 1989: 3:14.00. On December 5, Brazil again beat the record, with the same team, doing 3:12.11.[5] [6] This mark was achieved in the 1993 FINA World Swimming Championships, where he won gold in the 4×100-metre freestyle, and bronze in the 4×200-metre freestyle (breaking the South American record with a time of 7:09.38).[7][8] He also finished 5th in the 4×100-metre medley, along with Maurício Menezes, Gustavo Borges and Rogério Romero, and 15th in the 100-metre butterfly.