Her Story
About Jacquelyn
I started my career after graduating from Brown University where I majored in public policy and history. I worked on Capitol Hill for a handful of years for a member of Congress, rising from legislative assistant to chief of staff. I was the youngest chief of staff on Capitol Hill, and one of the few women at the time. I then went to Georgetown Law School, where I was involved in two clinics - one representing juveniles in the criminal system, and another teaching constitutional law to high school students. These experiences made me realize that schools had a critical role in the trajectory of kids' lives, and that if we could fix it on the front end by fixing schools, we could make a bigger difference faster. After doing several nonprofit startups at the regional and national level, I gained extensive experience in how to launch and run organizations, what is effective leadership, high-quality management, and how to drive outcomes in social impact work. I wanted to consult with other organizations to use my expertise and knowledge to make their lives easier and to support leaders - there's a lot of pattern recognition and learnings that happen when you lead for a long time, and I wanted to make other leaders' journeys less lonely and less challenging. I co-founded a public charter school to serve low-income children of color at a time when many people did not believe they could succeed at a very high level. The school down the street only had 3% of students reading at grade level, and we took the same student body and had them reading at 90% grade level. 25 years later, this school is still going strong and was featured in U.S. News & World Report's 100 Best High Schools in America. I also launched Clever Noodle, my game company, because there were no products on the market - no games and puzzles for children that were aligned to the science of how they actually learn to read. Being able to put these on the market and sell thousands a month, and get feedback from parents and teachers that this is making a huge difference in their children's lives, is incredibly rewarding. No day ever looks the same for me - I work with a myriad of clients, from philanthropic clients on their contributions for social impact, to executive directors of national immigration nonprofits, to facilitating groups of CEOs working on poverty alleviation, to attending Senate briefings on literacy for new legislation.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jacquelyn
01What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say to any young woman, find good mentors. Worry less about the specific organization, and more about who's going to be your direct manager, and how committed they are to your development, supporting you, opening doors for you, and giving you meaningful work. You can go to a really well-branded organization and have a horrible manager that doesn't treat you well, that doesn't help you grow, that doesn't give you meaningful opportunities, and you won't develop. Or you can go to a less branded organization and end up with a phenomenal experience and really grow. The other thing is to learn to manage up - how do you add value to your managers. Another really important lesson is making sure you ask for feedback, and that you're legitimately interested in feedback. You grow by getting feedback, both positive feedback and constructive feedback. Ask your manager, how can I grow? What are my next big buckets to grow in? How can I get better? Be focused on just continual growth. You should be growing for the rest of your life. I hope I go to the grave learning, and if I don't go to the grave learning, I will be missing some really powerful opportunities in life, and meaning in life. Have a real focus on how can I get better, where can I improve, what am I doing well that I can leverage to do even better.
02What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Right now, one of the challenges when you work in social impact is just the alignment in the country and the politics in the country, and the policies that are being set. When you care about food security, or affordable housing, or education for children, it's a very difficult time, and that puts strain on everything - on your ability for impact, on the colleagues you're working with that you're supporting in terms of my client work. Everyone is in a much more challenging place now, and it is very hard to succeed in social impact right now. There's just a really difficult time and environment. The funding climate is very difficult, so raising money for nonprofit efforts is more difficult than usual right now. I'm not raising the money, but it affects the clients that are trying to raise the money, which then also has an impact on business development in terms of attracting new clients. If the nonprofit sector has much less funding and much less focus, and their own donors are constricting, that makes it really hard for them to hire partners that could help them be stronger and grow. A lot of organizations aren't growing right now because they don't have funding.
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