Parlaying her economics degree into a business path that felt right, Jessica Drolet Wadlow landed at Johnson & Johnson after business school and worked for them for years. Needing to make a physical move for family reasons, she asked for a telecommuting situation long before that was en vogue. When she realized she needed another unorthodox move with the company, she knew what to do. Find out how sometimes the only way to get what you need is to ask for it.
New Hampshire native Jessica Drolet Wadlow felt college was home away from home being so close. She got involved in many things and was an economic major who went directly into the corporate world mostly out of interest but also because she had some loans to pay off. She landed in a management rotation program at JP Morgan and then went to business school. She switched careers into brand management and found herself at Johnson & Johnson where she stayed for many years.
Needing to make a physical move for family reasons, she asked for a telecommuting situation long before that was en vogue and when it meant days spent on no-video conference calls. When she realized she needed another kind of move with the company to accommodate a growing family, she knew what she needed to do.
In this episode, find out from Jessica how sometimes the only way to get what you need is to ask for it.
About This Episode’s Guest
Innovation and marketing strategist Jessica Drolet Wadlow is founder and president of J. Wadlow Consulting. For the past fifteen years, she has been an independent consultant working with large firms such as Johnson & Johnson, McKinsey, and Walgreens, as well as start-ups in need of accelerating growth via new business ventures and new business models.
For another story about forging your own path to make life work for you, listen to our episode with Shakari Cameron Byerly.
Find more episodes at https://roadstakenshow.com
Executive Producer/Host: Leslie Jennings Rowley
Music: Brian Burrows
Email the show at RoadsTakenShow@gmail.com
Jessica Drolet Wadlow: I wanted a family, but I also really enjoy engaging my brain and working with people and, and creating things. And I didn't wanna give that up. And so I figured out a way to do it my way and it worked.
Leslie Jennings Rowley: Parlaying her economics degree into a business path that felt right. Jessica Drolet Wadlow landed at Johnson & Johnson after business school and worked for them for years. Needing to make a physical move for family reasons, she asked for a telecommuting situation long before that was en vogue. When she realized she needed another unorthodox move with the company, she knew what to do. Find out how sometimes the only way to get what you need is to ask for it on today's Roads Taken with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley.
Today I'm here with Jessica Drolet Wadlow and we are going to talk about big changes for little reasons and maybe little changes for big reasons. I don't know, but I'm sure wherever we go it will be an interesting conversation. Thanks so much, Jess, for being with us.
JW: No problem. Happy to be here.
LJR: So I start these the same way each time with two questions and they are these: When we were in college, who were you? And when we were getting ready to leave, who did you think you would become?
JW: Well, those are good questions. In college, who was I? I was native to New Hampshire, so Dartmouth felt a bit like home away from home for me. It wasn't a big stretch for me to attend Dartmouth. I was very active in sorority life, both for Kappa, but also in the Panhellenic Society, so I was vice president of Panhellenic. I ran Rush, which makes me laugh because I was talking to my daughter who's now a freshman at Dartmouth, and she was asking me about Rush and honestly, like I think I blocked it out. It was a lot of work. So I was very involved in that kind of aspect of Dartmouth. I was an econ major, which was really fun. And actually at the time not a lot of women were in that major. And so the women I did meet, we had this sort of a special bond cuz it was a very male dominated major. But I loved it. And I'm still active in business today, so it really created the foundation.
And what else? I mean, I just had a lot of fun in college. Had lots of different friend groups. So I don't feel like I anchored in one space. It was very different than high school where I feel like you have one kind of group of people. But because of the D plan, I had opportunities to form different relationships and bonds with people across classes and within our class. So yeah, I mean, it was a fun, exciting experience. I went abroad for my sophomore Spring which really just sort of rounded out my experience and I highly recommend anybody who has the opportunity to go study abroad. So…
LJR: Yeah, yeah yeah. So as we were getting ready to leave, did you think that business was like the way and it was corporate corporate all the way and you were the recruiting type?
JW: I did the recruiting, yes. I did the recruiting. I ended up at JP Morgan through corporate recruiting. I was in their management services training program, which was a fabulous program and kind of unique. It wasn't straight banking. We got to do different rotations in different parts of the bank. So it was really a management rotation program, which really just allowed me to see a lot of different aspects. So, yeah, and then I, my plan was to go to business school.
I enjoy business, but I also wonder, looking back if I selected business because I had student loans and I really didn't have the luxury of doing something that didn't pay well right away. So it's interesting, like I don't think that was something I thought about at the time, but now retrospectively I wonder if, you know, there was some driver outside of just my interests that drove me there.
LJR: Yeah, yeah. We definitely see students’ decisions have changed where no-loan programs have gone in. But it wasn't as though you were doing it against your better judgment at the time.
JW: No, I haven't regretted any of my business experience and I actually have, you know, I loved business school. I went to University of Virginia, The Darden School. Really felt like…I did fine academically at Dartmouth. But I felt like when I got to Darden, I really excelled probably because of the, the subject matter. So that was a good experience. And then I did a career change, which often you do coming outta business school. And I went into brand management.
LJR: Ah, okay. In what kind of slice of the industries?
JW: So I worked for Johnson & Johnson coming outta grad school, and I worked on a number of brands that people are probably familiar with, but probably the most notable was Tylenol.
LJR: Hmm. Well after the problems with Tylenol.
JW: Yes. Well, after, thankfully I wouldn't have wanted to be on that brand at the time of the tampering. But you know, because of that, actually it's had such a great equity in how they handled it. It was a really fun business to be on and learning the interaction with the FDA because it is a, is, is a drug at the end of the day. So spent a lot of time, spent actually eight years at J&J doing various things, and then I left to. Do my own thing. I decided I didn't want to be a slave to corporate America. I needed flexibility. And at the time it was like jumping out, it was going out on a limb, But it's worked out fabulously.
LJR: Yeah, and I totally wanna dig into that because, I've heard a lot of people do that when they've had kind of strings of entrepreneurship kind of running through the world. But our economics department is not a business school. We don't really have that—at the time, there wasn't the robust kind of help for entrepreneurial spirit to be blossoming. I think that's very much changed now. And then you went into the megalith of JP Morgan. And then I will say kind of the megalith of J&J. [JW: Mm-hmm.] How do you decide and how do you feel? I'm ready for this And, and what's the, what's the actual path? Like, what's going through your head? What did you have to have lined up to get that to work?
JW: You know, it's funny, it's…I didn't do like a, a traditional entrepreneurial where you're coming up with a completely new idea, new service, new product. I decided I was gonna invest in myself, and I was the product and the brand. Coming from a marketing background, I thought I knew how to market myself, right? It's just like a product. And it was really about relationship building. So I think it's just comes naturally to me to make friends with the people I work with and to get to know them on a personal level and really have those connections. And those were very strong. And what happened was I had to move to Boston, so I was working remotely back in 2003. So this is like days of just conference calls, like no video, nothing. I was very early with the telecommuting because my husband got transferred because he was in a medical program and he had to do his, he went to Boston for his fellowship. So I asked my boss at J&J if I could work remotely. I—typical economics person—I presented the economic impact of, you know, I would come down every other week and I did the, you know, at the time plane fares were very cheap. And you know, they luckily they valued me and they allowed me to work remotely for five years. And then at that point I decided, you know what I don't wanna do this anymore. I was working a lot, I was traveling a lot at that point. I had two little kids. Ooh. And my husband worked a lot as a doctor. And so I floated the idea for a while, like, Hmm, how would it work if I wasn't an employee? And I just did project work for people. So I had talked to people internally and everybody was like, oh gosh, there's tons of work. We always need extra set of hands. And they were very supportive. So it's funny, I left as an employee on a, I guess, Tuesday and that night I was in focus groups with Johnson and Johnson as a consultant.
LJR: Nice.
JW: Like getting paid totally. You know, different line item. Totally different scenario. And it's funny, since I've done that, there's been a lot of people that have wanted to take the path that I took, and now you cannot become a consultant to J&J unless you've been gone I think it's like a six month to a year.
LJR: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
JW: But I, you know, it's funny, I, I really leaned in to first asking to work remotely and then, you know, jumping into the consultant pool. At the time there, you know, they were the mega consultants like McKinsey and, you know, Booz Allen and those very expensive consultants. But they didn't have a lot of people that were just like, Hey, I know the system. I know how to work at J&J, but I don't wanna be an employee. Most people wanted to be an employee. And I didn't need the benefits and I figured I needed more of the flexibility.
LJR: Yeah, because you had these two littles.
JW: Yes. Two littles and, you know, flying down at the time it was outside of Philadelphia where I was working. I just was, I just couldn't do it anymore. [LJR: Yeah.] And so actually it has worked out really well because as a consultant you don't, you give up, you know, the benefits, the long term bonuses and compensation, but you make up for that in the, the fee you charge. And you know, over the years I've been able to increase that based on just my experience and having worked on many different brands over 20 plus years. So…
LJR: Yeah. And you give up compensation and other things, but you are also gaining not just that fee that you get back, but the flexibility, the being there. And that's probably been more than worth.
JW: Oh yeah.It's, oh, that's priceless. I mean, the fact that I am able to pick up my, or was at the time able to pick up my kids from daycare and at a decent hour or if, you know, if they were sick, I was, I could work from home and it wasn't, you know, a stressor. So it just really, for working moms, and I always actually wanted to work. I wanted a family, but I also really enjoy engaging my brain and working with people and, and creating things. And I didn't wanna give that up. And so I figured out a way to do it my way and it worked.
LJR: Yeah, I'd say, particularly since you now have one at Dartmouth. So do you wanna talk a little bit about the new lens that you have of seeing your daughter in your shoes?
JW: Yeah. It's exciting actually. You know, it's a little different than we were there. I'm sure people have talked about it with learning communities and sort of the whole housing structure is completely different. But it was funny. So obviously having the opportunity to go up there with her, with her for a number of years for different reunions, she had sort of a sense of Dartmouth. But it wasn't necessarily like a given that she, that was where she was gonna apply early. And I think there was the hesitancy about going there because she did not necessarily want to take the same path as, cuz my husband also graduated from Dartmouth. He's a 95, I'm 96, and so she was like, I'm not sure I want to, you know, walk down the same path my parents walked down . And, you know, it was an interesting conversation, but at the end of the day, Dartmouth was the perfect fit for her. She's super outdoorsy. It was liberal arts. It was the right size, like. She wanted not to like it actually. [LJR: Right.] But that didn't work out. So anyway, we were very fortunate. She, she was a strong student, lots of extracurriculars, and she applied early and got in. And it was so fun going up and moving her in just to be back there and the energy and excitement and the schmob, what are they? The schmobs? Is that freshmans? [LJR: Yes, they were. I remember it, it was hilarious. I'm watching these students walk around and I'm like, they're in groups of 30. Like, that just doesn't happen. And I kept telling her, I'm like, in a couple of weeks, that won't happen anymore. Her freshman dorm was my junior dorm. And my husband lived there his sophomore year, so I was like, when she got her room assignment. I know the layout of the room. I know..
LJR: I know where the ice machine is.
JW: Yes. But Dartmouth's changed a lot, I think. She's experiencing a lot of different aspects that I didn't experience. She's super involved in the Dartmouth Outing Club, which is fabulous and that is just a, a really nice community and it's really, I feel like, expanded since we've been there. So, I mean, my only interaction was really my freshman trips and they're, everybody does still freshman trips. But they have the canoeing club, they have the mountaineering group, they have all these sub clubs within it, and maybe they always did. I just, I didn't engage there. So she's, and they, they run all these trips over. The mini breaks for the students. So she went out to Arizona and did rock climbing, and now she's an avid climber. So she's been very involved there. She joined the paper like right away cuz she loves to write and to interview and journalism is something she's toying with. But yeah, it's I feel like getting involved in, I don't know, maybe she's just that kind of kid.
LJR: So lots of different communities, kind of like you were talking about, you didn't feel anchored in one, but lots of different arms.
JW: Yes. And I feel like Dartmouth has so many more clubs. I, you know, that, I think there's just people over the years have found gaps in outages and just created their own experience and it's really created such a robust student life there. What is the same, I think is the level of engagement of the professors. And it's amazing how accessible they are and how interesting they are and they wanna work with undergrad students and I think that's one of the most beneficial parts of attending Dartmouth.
LJR: Yeah. Really cool. So is she your oldest?
JW: She is. Yes. And I have two others. I have a junior in high school and a seventh grader, so we have got…
LJR: Oh, you have a ways to go. Because I was gonna ask if this kind of beginning of the empty nest process has changed your outlook on work, but no, you're still in the thick of it all.
JW: I'm still in the thick of it, yes. Yes. Although I do yearn for the days where it's an empty house, although with..so we, with Emily gone, we just got a new puppy. So now I have, I've replaced her with, [LJR: oh my gosh] a second dog. So I guess I just am, I can't, I'm really not sure I ever wanna be an empty nester pregnant.
LJR: No, it sounds like not. You'll definitely always have your plate full. So if you looked back though, just at your senior year self, let's say. And you kind of knew where you were headed, first step. Would this be a logical place for you 25 plus years ahead?
JW: Yes and no. Like I think I always wanted a family and I always wanted to have a career. I think there are parts of me that wish I could have done it all, had climbed the corporate ladder and had that sort of senior decision-making responsibility and had the family. But I just, I'm not sure that that's viable if you have a spouse who also has those kinds of demands. And quite frankly, a lot less flexibility just because of the job. So I think you have to make compromises. But I do, as you know, it's funny, I'm still working and consulting for J&J, now on their pharma side, and people I worked with are on the executive committee and I, you know, I'm working with people who were more junior to me at the time, but stayed at J&J and are in leadership positions. And that's sometimes hard, right? Because I can consult and provide my opinions and advice, but at the end of the day, it's their call, right? And that is hard for me because I feel like had I stayed there, I would've been in a leadership position and been the one making the calls. Instead of advising.
LJR: I did wanna ask, actually, so you said that, I can totally see the dynamic in, you know these players at J&J, they're in these roles that you could have seen yourself in, and the call has to be theirs, and you are in an advisory position. Does that wrinkle in the same way with other clients that you're just giving them advice and they can take it or leave it and you're like Okay, I see you not doing what I said and that's annoying, but it is different or is it just kind of.
JW: It, no, it is different. So with clients that I don't have that kind of level of relationship, I don't have that, I guess deep seated connection, I still am very connected to J&J ‘cause I worked there for many years. So yeah, I think it's less, and if they wanna take my advice and they want, yeah great. But if they don't, I'm like, good luck, you know, Good luck to you. And it's much easier for me to walk away from other clients, too, that I don't necessarily. Like as a consultant, you sometimes through the grapevine get gigs or projects and you find out, you know, you're like, I don't really like working with these people.
LJR: This is not a fit. Yeah.
JW: It’s not a fit. So, you know, in those cases, it's nice to be able to walk away and just be like, you know, have them at arm's length. So I've had both, actually. I've worked on big businesses. I've worked on teeny businesses with a, you know, a founder and that's it, pretty much. And it's really interesting to see companies at such different stages and the struggles and the, you know, the world of startup funding. It's fascinating and I feel lucky that I can see so many different types of businesses. I think that's actually what's made me marketable, you know, for 20 plus years. So, you know, I do like to work with other businesses outside of J&J. And actually, that was my rule when I first started. My rule was I can work for J&J, but I'll always have a second client. I've sort of gone back on that since Covid, because I haven't really wanted to work quite as much. And we were going through the college process with my daughter and my son is doing the recruiting process for baseball for college. And so it's nutso, as you can imagine, and so now I've only been working for J&J since 2021, which is against my rule.
LJR: So all founders out there…[JW: Yes!]…there's a great consultant here who could help you. So is there anything that you've seen in your evolution of working from for this giant entity and then working for the small startup idea that like changes the way you think about things or is the approach always the same?
JW: No, it's definitely different. And the needs are different. Ao you've gotta be a lot more scrappy and innovative in terms of, you know, how do you get the information you need to make recommendations? You, they, you know, in small startups, they don't have access to the databases of a big company. But what they do have is a lot of energy and flexibility, and they're constantly looking at their strategy and saying, you know, let's tinker with it. Is it right? Is this, you know. A strategy is not like a straight line and you constantly are, you know, pivoting, right? And that's what makes a good entrepreneur. They pivot. I mean, the example of Uber, you know, they, as it is today was not where they started. They started with, I think it was like a car service kind of, but it wasn't, you know, the app and all of that. It was very different. And so I think entrepreneurs are super flexible and big companies are not. So pivoting strategy is painful and difficult, and it might be the right thing for a big company to do, but there's so much baggage and it makes it very, very challenging. So I try to bring, when I'm consulting for a bigger company, I try to bring a little bit of that innovative, that entrepreneurial thinking where I can bring that in to play. Maybe it's not the big strategic direction of a brand, but maybe it's something on their innovation pipeline or maybe something how they communicate in the marketplace, whatever it might be, distribution, like, and I bring some of that, like that level of thinking into the bigger businesses.
And then on the flip side, big companies are great at structure and startups have no structure, right? And everybody's doing everything and there's no really clear roles and responsibilities. And sometimes that gets messy and inefficient, too. So I also, having the big company experience, try to frame for smaller companies, you know, maybe there's a better way or let's organize it this way, or, have some level of process. I'm not a big process person, but I do think that in some cases you need some sort of process, right? So it's fun seeing both sides of the coin. And I used to always think that grass is, you know, I was always like, when I worked at a big company, oh my God, I wanna work for a startup. And then when you work for a startup, you're like, oh my God, it's chaotic.
LJR: Give me the access…
JW: And I need the like structure of a big company. So, I guess I haven't really found my ideal, but I, you know, I guess that's just part of it. It keeps it interesting.
LJR: Yeah. And you can look at the context of each and say, okay, I, I'll take a little from this and lend to this, but knowing that there are some barriers and, and boundaries.
JW: Yes. Yes.
LJR: Yeah. So it is, and it's good at the end of the day, you get to walk away and be with your family and, have your own boundaries and
JW: Exactly. You know, again, I always thought I would have a career and kids. I guess the trade off is I'm happy that I was able to find a way to do it versus completely give up one or the other. [LJR: Right.] Because that wasn't really a choice to me. So it was always like, how do I figure this out? I just wish it were easier for women in the workplace. And I think it's gotten better, but every powerful senior person I know has a spouse who's super flexible, or they don't have kids. There are very few people who have, you know, sort of the family situation I have where the spouse who has a very demanding job.
LJR: Yeah, exactly. Well, it seems like you've found the right juggle, at least for you guys for right now, and it's just, it's great to hear how you've made it work for yourself. So thanks so much for sharing all this.
JW: No, no problem. It's been fun.
LJR: That was innovation and marketing strategist Jessica Drolet Wadlow, founder and president of J. Wadlow Consulting. For the past 15 years, she's been an independent consultant working with large firms such as Johnson & Johnson, McKenzie and Walgreens, as well as startups in need of accelerating growth via new business ventures and new business models. Our business model for the podcast is based mainly on word of mouth. Please help us and tell as many friends as you can about our show. Tell them they can find the full archive and related links at roadstakenshow.com or wherever they find their podcasts. You can also leave us a review on your favorite platform. The social proof from five shiny stars apparently helps new listeners find us. And as for your recurring listeners, thanks for your continued support and for tuning in with me, Leslie Jennings Rowley on Roads Taken.