Her Story
About Jennifer
My main area of expertise today is to listen to our customers and provide solutions that align with their goals with regard to the students that they serve in the K-12 space. After being asked to chair the curriculum committee as a teacher, it was the discovery that the role that I'm in now was actually a role. I think as a teacher, I never thought about where the materials came from that I was given to teach with. I just assumed that they magically appeared, and I didn't really understand the ramifications of vetting curriculum and really going through the process, the sales cycle process with the curriculum vendor. It was only after getting asked to do that, and to chair that committee, that I really realized that it excited me so much, and reinvigorated my interest in my career, that it was something that I wanted to do. I think a personal achievement of mine is that I had someone at the organization, at the school district, say to me, I kept emailing you and emailing you and trying to get an answer to my question, and the email kept bouncing back, and I couldn't figure out why, and then I realized, you work for the vendor, you don't work for us. It made me realize that my customers don't see me as a salesperson, they see me as a true partner. She thought that I worked for the school district, and so I took that as the highest compliment. My customers really value the relationship that I have with them, and don't look at me as, oh, here she comes again to sell us something.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jennifer
01What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I connected with a high school friend who had made the transition out of the classroom, and he gave me the advice to join any sales organization at an entry level, which is what I did. For 8 months, I worked for an industry selling payroll, human resources, completely out of my comfort zone, but I did that in order to stretch myself and get the time to develop business acumen and sales strategy and all of the things that I would need to learn. At about the 6-month mark, after doing that successfully for 6 months, I then dove into the job search to get me to where I am now.
02What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say the advice that I would give to women is that don't think just because you start your career in one field, that does not mean that you can't segue into another field at another time. It's never too late to start over. I was in my forties when I made the decision to leave the classroom and start this path. I'm going to be fifty on Sunday, actually. And so, it's never too late. Don't be afraid, you know, there are going to be challenges throughout, but if you can find your path and find the thing that excites you, it's well worth the little bit of time that you might feel uncomfortable and very much like a fish out of water, but once you do it and get into your groove, you won't look back. You'll be glad that you made the change. Teachers don't realize that their skills are 100% transferable into another space. Teachers are born leaders, organizers, usually very charismatic, because you have to hold the attention of your class for the period that you have them. They don't realize their own strengths. If they're stuck and frustrated in the career that they're in, they absolutely have something that they could embrace and just get out of their comfort zone and learn something new that could be really beneficial for a lot of different reasons.
03What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
I would say opportunities is, you know, the main opportunity, of course, is always to help as many students as we can. We want to hear what a district is facing and the challenges that they have as student needs and what students have access to is constantly evolving. And that also is the biggest challenge, is that education is always evolving, and it's just trying to stay relevant within the space that we're in, and know that what we're doing is going to give students the best opportunity for empowerment and making sure that they have the brightest and best opportunity to build their futures.
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