Georgene Huang is obsessed with improving the workplace for women. She’s the CEO and Co-founder of Fairygodboss, a marketplace where professional women looking for jobs, career advice and the inside scoop on companies meet employers who believe in gender equality.
Previously she ran the enterprise business at Dow Jones and was a Managing Director at Bloomberg Ventures. She is a graduate of Cornell and Stanford Universities.
Sneak Peek Into What You’ll Learn…
01:17 – Georgene tells us more about the job reviews and resources available via the company she co-founded, Fairygodboss.
05:35 – Georgene shares how her own experience interviewing for jobs while pregnant led her to start Fairygodboss.
08:16 – Georgene explains how she tested her concerns about the concept for Fairygodboss before making the decision to scale.
10:25 – Georgene goes deeper into the specific steps she took in order to grow Fairygodboss into a successful and influential company.
11:46 – Georgene talks about the process she and her co-founder went through to raise money for Fairygodboss.
13:12 – Georgene tells us more about her unique career journey before Fairygodboss, beginning with her life as a classical musician.
16:06 – Georgene outlines best practices for employers interested in making their environment better for working women.
19:20 – Georgene discusses the advice she would give to working dads who want to be more involved in day to day care of their children, but feel there is stigma associated with family related activities.
22:44 – Georgene shares the number one thing users of Fairygodboss say about what a company can do to successfully attract and retain mid-career women
26:40 – Georgene talks about the mentors and sponsors in her life and how they supported her along her career journey.
30:00 – Georgene tells us more about her growing family and her unusual return to work after being promoted while on maternity leave at Dow Jones.
34:33 – Georgene discusses the sacrifices involved with juggling life as the CEO of a growing company with her responsibility as the mother of 3 children.
40:31 – Brass Tacks— The lightning round of concrete advice and tips.
Quotable quotes:
- “I do think that having had a number of different jobs in my career has helped me be a better entrepreneur.”
- “When I look at it now, and I’m trying to cultivate a group of people around me that can give me advice about how to build a company and be an entrepreneur, I realize how much of it is really up to me. I have to make a lot of effort….I basically have to put myself out there ….I think it’s a lot of hustle.”
- There’s a certain amount of flexibility that comes from being an entrepreneur that is harder to achieve in most corporate jobs, quite frankly.”
- “Sometimes sitting on a business idea isn’t the worst thing in the world…there’s a lot to be said for testing out an idea in a side project kind of way, to just validate and kick the tires that it’s really as good as you think it is.”
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