From Teacher to Tech Leader: Jennifer Dulski on Resilience, Leadership, and Building Connected Teams

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Jennifer Dulski’s career journey is anything but linear. She started as a high school teacher, moved into the nonprofit world, and went on to hold executive roles at Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and Change.org. Today she is the Founder and CEO of Rising Team, a platform that equips managers with the tools to build trust, connection, and effectiveness across distributed teams, while also serving on the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

In this episode of Badass Women in Business, Jennifer shares her hard-earned lessons on resilience, leadership, and entrepreneurship. She explains why the ability to get back up after being knocked down is the most critical entrepreneurial skill, introduces her “Three Cs” framework for managers (clarify, coach, connect), and reflects on her own experience balancing executive leadership with motherhood. From insights on hybrid work and AI to the power of small movements that snowball into lasting change, Jennifer offers a candid and practical playbook for leaders who want to make a bigger impact.

Show Notes

• Jennifer’s unconventional path from teaching to tech and why amplifying others has always been at the heart of her leadership
• The lessons she carried from leading at Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and Change.org into founding Rising Team
• Why resilience is the defining trait of successful entrepreneurs and how to build it in yourself and your teams
• The Three Cs of leadership—clarify, coach, connect—and how they apply in today’s hybrid workplace
• How Rising Team blends AI with human connection to improve manager effectiveness and employee engagement
• Why guilt doesn’t help when balancing parenthood and leadership, and how Jennifer developed her own “work-life mash-up”
• The core principles behind her Wall Street Journal bestselling book Purposeful and what it really takes to start movements that matter
• Practical strategies to build trust and connection on distributed teams without overwhelming your calendar
• Why women need to stop pre-apologizing in the workplace and lead with clarity and confidence

Contact Information

• Guest: Jennifer Dulski
• Company: Rising Team
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jdulski
• Book: Purposeful: Are You a Manager or a Movement Starter? (Wall Street Journal Bestseller)

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