Jennifer Folsom — Winner of the 2010 Hot Mommas Project Case Competition

Jennifer Folsom is the winner of the 2010 Hot Mommas Project case competition. The Hot Mommas Project is an award-winning research project making stories of women teachable to serve as virtual role models and mentors. In this series, students comment on what they learn from the cases both from a personal and career standpoint.

My name is Li Zheng. I am a student at the George Washington University, and today I will write on one of the Hot Mommas Project 2010 case winners, Jennifer Folsom.  In her case, Jennifer describes her journey through career choices and balancing a family, sometimes successfully, and sometimes with flaming objects being carried out the front door from the kitchen!

P.s. Please pardon my English grammar errors.  I am an international student, posting from Beijing, China this summer. Thanks!

Jennifer as a role model

Jennifer is a role model not only for her family, but also for all of us.  As described in her Hot Mommas^® project case, Jennifer is the first college student in her family, an all-star undergraduate, and a Phi Beta Kappa, which is an academic honor society.

The entrepreneurial spirit in us all

Early on, Jennifer believed that corporate finance is the most lucrative and difficult career to obtain.   This area deals with financial decisions that a business enterprises make. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize corporate value while managing the firm’s financial risks.  Her practical experience, and interning at Legg Mason Wood Walker made her further realize the importance of corporate finance.  This realization determined her path to Georgetown McDonough School of Business.

Overcoming challenges

The biggest challenge that Jennifer faced is the balancing point between career and family.  While she was enjoying the happiness of an offer from a prestigious internship in an investment bank, she was worried about her future of the family.  However, she finally felt that family is more important than career.  In 2001, she decided to start a family and got pregnant very quickly.

My career learning from Jennifer

As a student major in Economics, Jennifer’s concept of corporate finance sparks my interest.  I have heard of this term before, but never had desire to look deeper into it.  I am impressed that she could realize how lucrative corporate finance is in such an early time.  Also, from her case, I learned that some knowledge is not directly learned from a text book, but real experience.  Jennifer didn’t realize the importance of corporate finance until she did an internship in a company.  Hopefully I will apply my knowledge of economics to the real world next semester when I get back to Washington, DC.

Comment from Li’s friend Vivian’s comment

I admire Jennifer in many ways.  To me, she is wise, determined, aggressive, and full of love.

–Vivian Liuyu Fields, Hong Kong University’10 / Beijing University’11

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The Hot Mommas Project is an award-winning venture housed at the George Washington University School of Business.  We make women’s stories teachable using our “case wizard” at www.HotMommasProject.org . The Hot Mommas Project library is the first of its kind, providing scalable, global access to role models and virtual mentors that can be used by educators, trainers, and parents. We’ve been featured in Prentice Hall textbooks, the Washington Post Magazine, NPR and are the winner of a national Coleman Foundation case award.

How you can get involved: Write your story, or nominate a dynamic woman 18 or older.

Our call for 2011 nominations has begun. While the contest runs through January 31, 2011 – Start now! There will be prizes this spring and fall for early bird publishers.

How it works: Nominated women come online, write their story using our “case wizard,” and click “publish” to be permanently archived in our case library.  Winners will be published in a leading Prentice Hall textbook in addition to other honors and prizes. To participate, nominate a dynamic woman 18 or older (yourself included) here or find us on Twitter. No, you do not need to be a mom. To inquire about sponsorship, email us. Here is our 2010 press release.