Business & Entrepreneurship Career Community
Jennifer Jurgens '03
Employer
CEO & Founder, 1 Bold Step, LLC
LinkedIn Profile
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferjurgens/
1. Tell us about your journey since graduation.
I attended Grand Valley twice. Once in 1989 as a Freshman (later
transferring to MSU for their Supply Chain Management Program) and
then again for Graduate School to get my MBA. The majority of my
career has been in sales & marketing technology, with a 4-year
stint in non-profit as the Executive Director of Susan G. Komen of
Michigan. I moved out of Michigan three times; once to Hawaii, then to
Los Angeles, and finally to San Francisco... each time coming home to
Michigan. My journey has taken me from writing inventory systems for
bars in Waikiki to becoming a data center expert in Silicon Valley
during the dot.com craze, to creating and managing sales &
marketing process efficiencies for large manufacturers with complex
sales channels. In recent years, I started a Marketing Operations
& Strategy company with another GVSU graduate; Adam Clarke.
2. Share a favorite Grand Valley memory.
During my Freshman year, I played on the Varsity Volleyball Club
and absolutely loved the practices and the people I met through our
travels. I even went on to play competitive beach volleyball with some
of them. From my graduate studies, I fondly recall Dr. Samir Isaak,
who taught one of our capstone classes. After the first class, I went
home distraught; certain that he was pushing too hard and that I was
never going to be able to understand what he wanted from us. By
midterm, I realized that he was pushing me because he thought I could
do better. And by the end of the class; I had a whole new
understanding of how good strategies were formed and how best to
communicate them for optimal execution. And I got an “A”. =B
3. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?
There are two: “Be the aspirin and not the headache” & “Maybe
you should just start your own business”. Both came from work with
Pondera Advisors (the talented Joe Day & Dr. Jackie Taylor). Being
the aspirin to headaches for our clients AND getting to choose who we
help and how (because it’s our business) has been an amazing experience.
4. List three words you would use to describe your Grand
Valley experience.
Discovery, Confidence, and Relationships
5. What difference would you like to make in the world?
My focus has changed over the years, but there has always been a
theme of making something better, faster, and more efficient. From
years at Komen fighting breast cancer, to serving on the inaugural
TEDxGrand Rapids committee, to mentoring younger people looking to get
into the field of marketing, I’ve been obsessed with people’s
potential, and then scale and repeatability. I would like to think
that after years of always trying to positively impact lives, some
type of ripple effect would continue after I was gone. The difference
I make may just be a subtle change in how something is approached or
handled, which would be hard to quantify but very easy to feel. I was
once told that my mother brought joy to every situation she
encountered and that’s the kind of difference I’d like to make too.
May 2023
Interest Area(s)
Business Administration, Marketing
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