128: Jessica Holton | Founder & CEO, Ours

06/26/24 • 55 min

Jessica is the CEO and Founder of Ours, a virtual couples therapy and premarital counseling platform with a mission to make couples therapy more accessible, destigmatized and designed for young, modern couples.

Beyond Ours, Jessica also founded Access Distributed to help students at non-target recruiting schools land internships in finance and she also founded BLAZE Skincare, a personalized skincare brand.
However, Jessica’s career started in finance. She received her Bachelors in accounting and finance from Georgetown University, and then started her professional career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and The Carlyle Group before receiving her MBA from Stanford Graduate School of business.

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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn and many more.

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1. Welcome to She Leads
2. Growing Up & Jessica's Upbringing
3. Odd Jobs
4. Choosing a Major in Finance and Business + Lessons Learned
5. Power of Mentorship and Selecting the Right Ones
6. Going to Business School and Having No Regrets
7. Starting Access Distributed
8. Founding Ours
9. Breaking Down the Stigma of Couples Therapy
10. Choosing a Cofounder: Kindness + Communication + Trust
11. Lessons in Fundraising: Fake Excitement

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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn and many more.

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Previous Episode

127: Audrey Wisch | Founder & CEO, Curious Cardinals

Audrey is the Founder and CEO of Curious Cardinals, an edtech company committed to empowering K-12 students to discover and pursue their passions with the guidance of college mentors.

Audrey started Curious Cardinals as a freshman at Stanford University, where she was pursuing a Bachelors degree in History. Just one year later, the COVID pandemic hit and Audrey ultimately decided to take a leave of absence from Stanford to pursue Curious Cardinals full time. Today, Curious Cardinals is a global community of over 500 top college students mentoring kids across the globe.

Audrey has spoken on CNN, the Today Show and in Forbes to share her vision to create a community of lifelong learners and doers. She was also recognized in the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 Education and Youngest category.

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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn and many more.

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Show Notes:

1. Welcome to She Leads
2. Audrey's Upbringing in NY
3. Audrey as a Child - being her own CEO
4. Going to Stanford with a 10-year Plan
5. The Impact of COVID
6. Founding Story of Curious Cardinals
7. Power of Project-Based Learning and Mentorship in Education
8. Fundraising for Curious Cardinals and Lessons Along the Way
9. The Role of AI in Education Today
10. The Power of Resilience and Continuous Learning
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Next Episode

129: Elena Gomez | Chief Financial Officer of $14B Co., Toast

Elena is the Chief Financial Officer of Toast, the cloud-based, end-to-end technology platform purpose-built for the entire restaurant community - a public company now valued close to $15Bn.

With more than 30 years of experience in leading large global organizations, Elena’s expertise ranges from scaling and building SaaS businesses into multi-billion organizations and building and leading large-scale operational teams.

Before joining Toast, Elena has held senior roles in finance working as the VP of Finance at Charles Schwab, SVP of Finance and Strategy at Salesforce and the Chief Financial Officer at Zendesk, where she helped scale the company to over $1 billion in annual revenue.

Beyond operating, Elena is an investor and sits on the board of PagerDuty. She is also the chair of the Berkeley Haas School Board, serving as the first woman to serve in this role; Berkeley is also where she earned her Bachelors degree in Accounting.

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Past guests include Margaret Wishingrad, Kara Goldin, Brandi Chastain, Julie Foudy, Ann Miura Ko, Linda Avey, Sarah Leary, Becky Sauerbrunn and many more.

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Show Notes:
1. Intro of Elena Gomez + She Leads
2. Elena's Upbringing
3. The Value of Education and Work Ethic
4. The Influence of Elena's Grandfather in Accounting
5. Early Career at Charles Schwab + Navigating Imposter Syndrome
6. Transition to Salesforce
7. Authenticity and Self-Advocacy in the Workplace
8. Becoming CFO + Building Trust in Relationships
9. Top 3 Skills in a CFO: Storytelling, Communication, Customer Obsession
10. Advocating for Diversity and Inclusion
11. 'Work-Life Balance' as a Mother and CFO
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