#62 - CEO of Rebel Girls Jes Wolfe on the Richness of Life, Frame of Reference, and Embracing Steep Learning Curves

Jes and Pooja discuss the mission of the increasingly powerful Rebel Girls platform: to close the gender “confidence gap” across the world. Jes and her team want to help raise the most confident global generation of girls. And to that extent, Jes uncovers the details behind why RG’s storytelling is so compelling and the mental and socio-emotional facets that contribute to building self-confidence in girls such as empathy, curiosity, the power of tenacity, and sense of belonging. Their digital app, Rebel Girls Dream, is out now, and their pipeline is filled with more efficacious products in the works. It all very exciting and inspires much hope.

Moving beyond Rebel Girls, it became obvious to me how much wisdom can be extracted from Jes’s own personal journey - Her house burning down in her teens, a prior job taking her to over 70 countries, her background as a competitive swimmer and her career from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. What impacted me most was her grounded philosophy about life itself. In the face of struggle, Her mom of told her, “Jes, you’re still alive, keep going”. And she’s taken this message to heart, celebrating what she calls the richness that is life, grateful for everyday which provides yet another opportunity to impact the world, cultivating a frame of reference that sees problems as opportunities, and relishing the challenges that come from steep learning curves...because with steepness comes discomfort. and with discomfort, managed in a thoughtful way, comes radical growth.

Jes is one of the most grounded people I’ve come across and you’ll find a lot of nice wisdom here that you can apply on your journey to cultivating inner calm and living a life of freedom. 

“Success is building a rich and full life” ~ Jes Wolfe

About Jes:

Jes Wolfe is the CEO of Rebel Girls, a girl-driven edutainment company on a mission to inspire and instill confidence in 50 million girls over the next 5 years. To date, Rebel Girls has sold 5.5 million books, translated into 49 languages in 85 countries, and has 8+ million downloads of its award-winning podcast.  Under Wolfe’s leadership, the Company is expanding its offerings to television, live theater, merchandise and digital.

Ms. Wolfe is an entrepreneur, an operator, an investor and an advisor. Prior to joining the Rebel Girls team, Ms. Wolfe was the Chief Operating Officer at Hoodline, a hyper-local media tech company, which grew to 30 employees before selling to NextDoor. Before her segue into the startup world, Ms. Wolfe worked for over a decade in a variety of strategy and finance roles at Morgan Stanley, the Boston Consulting Group, the International Finance Corporation, and private equity portfolio companies. She has done project work in 25+ countries and 5 continents, and has worked with a range of companies from startups to Fortune 500. Her experience spans M&A, Corporate Development, Business Development, Strategy, Sales Leadership, and Technology Development. While she has focused on the intersection of Media and Technology for the past 5 years, previously, she worked in the Healthcare, Financial Institution, and Industrial Goods industries.

Ms. Wolfe currently sits on two Boards. She is on the Board of Directors of Rebel Girls, as well as the Board of Directors of Knowhere News. In addition, she is an Advisor to a number of other startups including Kindest, Curie, My Tamarin, and Avails Medical. Ms. Wolfe is an active angel investor, and has a portfolio of approximately a dozen companies.

Ms. Wolfe holds an MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where she was an Arjay Miller scholar, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

For more on Jes & Rebel Girls: 

Rebel Girls Website

IG: @RebelGirls

Twitter: @RebelGirlsBook

Rebel Girls Dream App

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For more from Host Pooja Mottl:  www.PoojaMottl.com

Podcast Producer: www.Go-ToProductions.com

Twitter: @PoojaMottl

Instagram: @TheCalmandFreePodcast and @PoojaMottl  

LinkedIn: @PoojaMottl

Special Thanks : 

Kris Kosach of the TPR Podcast for lending her VO for our Podcast Intro

Jessica Panian for her help with our graphic design