Whitney Johnson #BIF7 Summit: Strong Sequel for Real Working Girl
Editor’s note: This is the third post in a series of BIF Summit storyteller videos, curated by the Business Innovation Factory (BIF).
While the film Working Girl came out on the big screen, Whitney Johnson, a recent music major, began her Wall Street career as a secretary. Johnson identified with the lead character Tess McGill’s “sense of pluck” and eventually rose to become an Institutional Investor-ranked sell-side equity analyst. Her inquisitive frame of mind makes her a master of details and a clear-sighted judge of circumstances. She describes herself as “very discovery-driven,” someone who looks at the “brass ring” in front of her and goes after it.
That’s one reason why she disrupted herself by walking away from a seven-figure job at Merrill Lynch over six years ago. There were no more brass rings, and she didn’t want to just keep “dialing it in,” she says: “I had peaked…I felt the pull of wanting to do more entrepreneurial things, wanting to create and build something that was more mine.” Whitney Johnson is now the Co-Founder of Clayton Christensen’s investment firm Rose Park Advisors’ Disruptive Innovation Fund, a regular contributor at Harvard Business Review, and the author of, DARE-DREAM-DO: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream.
Teaching us never to be afraid to take risks, Johnson truly embraces all things innovative. She doesn’t paint a magical picture of disruption, she remarks it’s hard, lonely and sometimes you feel a little crazy. “I could not have imagined, in a million years, that I would end up co-founding a hedge fund with Clayton Christensen. Here’s the important thing: when we are on this disruptive path, we can’t know what will come next. But, we’re in good company.” So, Johnson asks: are you ready to disrupt yourself?
Watch Whitney Johnson’s story here:
And, follow the inspiration at the #BIF9 Summit:
image credit: businessinnovationfactory.com
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