by Jess Gartner
5 years ago today I did a crazy thing. I walked away from a great job to pursue an inkling of an idea. This was a clean (psychotic) break from the first 25 years of my life, during which I played by all the rules, colored inside the lines, and took well-trodden paths. Goodbye to […]
Each day, I skim through the headlines of the Aspen Institute’s Five Best Ideas of the Day newsletter. One caught my eye this morning: The secret to office happiness isn’t working less—it’s caring less The premise is unnervingly true. Caring less is the cultural aspiration du jour in a time when many of us are suffering […]
I have always been obsessed with working. My very first job was “Mother’s Helper” for my neighbor at age 9 and I just started collecting hustles from there. Unlike most young entrepreneurs, I wasn’t really in it for the money. I liked making money, but I viewed it as buying my independence to shop and […]
Last quarter, a few things happened at once with our team at Allovue. 1) We were at a major inflection point, shifting my focus as CEO from mostly on product development to mostly on sales & marketing 2) Our CTO’s wife was 7 months pregnant, so we wanted to free up some of his time […]
“How can you be a CEO when you were just a teacher?” This is one of the most common questions I have fielded as the CEO and founder of Allovue, an early-stage financial analytics company. Initially the question offended me; I prickled at the insinuation of all the worst teacher stereotypes: teachers aren’t as smart […]
Every theatre kid has a moment (or many moments) when they consider pursuing a career in acting. I had my moments. Every few months or so for the decade between middle school and college graduation (the heyday of my theatre career, as life would have it), I would threaten my parents with pursuing acting. I […]
On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal ran an opinion editorial by Jay Greene, “The Imaginary Teacher Shortage,” which posited that while the United States has added a million teachers to the rolls since 1970, student performance has remained unchanged. Greene challenged the presidential candidates’ plans to add more teachers, imploring state and local officials to […]
