Good Fortune

Writing about sustainable startups and interviewing Impact Founders to inspire your next impact project, startup, or side hustle. 

Good Fortune will help you:
🌱 Discover sustainable businesses
🧠 Learn from Impact Founders
🌍 Meet likeminded change makers

Founder

Swinburne Design Factory Melbourne

Developing new products, services, and experiences for the innovation world.

Working with Industry, Government, and Individuals to better understand their world and design new solutions to make it a better one.

Senior Product Development Manager

Create Kaizen

I design tools, workshops, and learning programs for tech leaders to:
- Build innovative teams
- Improve creative collaboration
- Build human-centered organizations
- Create systems to navigate uncertainty
- Develop creative problem solving practices

Strategic Designer & Facilitator

Designit

- Lead discovery research, persona building, and journey mapping for transformation projects
- Designed and facilitated AI enablement workshops for exploration and implementation
- Partnered with BizDev to identify customer needs across partner orgs
- Implemented Design Thinking to tackle creative business transformation problems

Strategic Design Lead

NOBA

NOBA partners with companies to build and launch new products, services, or business models.

I supported digital, innovation, and marketing teams in different stages of the development and launch of new products:
- Defining the value propositions and business model for new products and services
- Testing and learning through business prototyping - building and launching an alpha version of the business, gathering metrics, and iterating with real customers
- Driving a soft market launch to start growing the customer base before scaling

Business Designer

NerdWallet

- Software development planning and visibility at all levels of management
- End to end quarterly planning for cross-functional pods
- Manage communication touchpoints between Product, Engineering, Design, Data
- Agile coaching for NerdWallet feature teams
- Program Management for Content Design team

NerdWallet is on a mission to provide clarity for all of life’s financial decisions. We provide consumers with expert, personalized, and actionable guidance across a range of personal finance topics. Whether you’re shopping for a new credit card or mortgage, hoping to refinance a student loan, interested in learning more about investing, or just want to stay on top of your money, we do the homework for you, simplifying complex ideas so you have the information and tools you need to make the right decision for you.

Backed by IVP, RRE Ventures, iGlobe Partners and Silicon Valley Bank, among others, NerdWallet has been certified a Great Place to Work and named one of the Best Workplaces in the Bay Area™ 2020 by Fortune. We’ve been recognized for our stellar benefits, too, from world-class health, vision, and dental insurance to our matching 401(k) program to our generous time off and parental leave policies. 

Based in San Francisco, we have more than 400 passionate “Nerds” around the country, and we’re growing every day. Whether you’re committed to helping consumers or  excited about working for a profitable tech company or interested in growing professionally—or all of the above!—we’d love to hear from you. Check out our job openings here: http://www.nerdwallet.com/careers

Program Manager

- Project manager for Content Design team, creating graphics, illustrations, animations and editorial videos
- Certified ScrumMaster, Scrum Alliance
- Refine and streamline department processes to maintain efficiency and scalability in a fast growing startup environment
- Facilitate projects for a stakeholder team of 90 Content Strategists, Assigning Editors, Copy Editors, and Writers in team operations and communication
- Develop and oversee quantitative success metrics and key performance indicators for Content and Content Design teams
- Advise Content team on institutional knowledge, the fluid inner workings of startup company operations and their position in it

Content Operations and Project Management

Interscope Records

- Coordinated photo shoots and graphic design work for 100+ artist roster
- Oversaw and refined end to end project portals for photographers, stylists, graphic designers, etc.
- Created and resolved photography and art contracts for all creative services provided to Interscope artists
- Organized and facilitated all travel, setup and production operations  for Interscope directors, photographers, producers, and stylist  teams
- Refined organizational strategy, including artist archiving, scheduling, and soliciting promotional materials

Creative Marketing

Opus Bank

- Consulted high net-worth banking clientele, managing accounts $500k-$1mm in balances
- Spearheaded sales team who aquired $50mm in deposits since inception 10.17.2011
- Integral part of opening and growing de novo banking office
- Integrated new sales, appointment, and follow up pipelines for Opus Bank de novo offices
- Generated qualified large acquisition meetings for VP/Retail Banking Manager

Client Services

Want to build a business that makes money AND makes a difference?

I break down exactly how successful impact founders are doing it.

Through conversations with founders and detailed case studies, I uncover the strategies and tactics that actually work in social impact.

At Good Fortune, I'm creating:
🎙️ Deep-dive conversations with impact founders sharing their playbook
📧 Weekly newsletters breaking down successful impact businesses
🛠️ Free, actionable tools for bootstrapped teams (like our Tactic Cards)

Everything I make is designed to help you:
- Validate your impact business idea
- Find and connect with your first customers
- Grow sustainably while maximizing impact
- Navigate the unique challenges of social enterprise

Want actionable insights for your impact business?

→ Subscribe to my weekly newsletter
→ Download free Tactic Cards
→ Listen to the latest founder deep dives


A bit more about me and why I love doing this:
🏄 I've always been an "experience channel surfer" (look at my work history)
💭 I love finding the overlap between creativity, strategy, and impact
🙏 I want to create things that enable others to do their best work

Give me a follow 🔔 for free content and learnings shared daily, or reach out if you want to talk strategy and social innovation (whatever that means to you).

Jake Carroll

Sanford Health

Provide leadership for medium to large-size projects ($100k-$1M+) and delivers projects by managing internal and external resources, schedules, and financials throughout the full project management life cycle.

Duties include creating, managing, and updating timelines, budgets, resources, vendors, and key project deliverables from project initiation to close out as well as assess project risks, propose resolutions, manage change requests, and track implementation of resolution through to completion to ensure successful and on-time project delivery.

Verification of quality and that the project achieves the proposed benefits defined in the business case.

Senior Project Manager

Sanford Research

Delivered small, medium, and large-scale gene therapy and small molecule screening projects for safety and efficacy, ranging from $25k-$1M.

Managed cross-functional teams of 20+ with multiple collaborators across the country to coordinate project discovery, SOW and budget generation, active project progression tracking, stakeholder management and reporting, effective quality control and change management.

Established a therapeutics screening facility generating $1M in business from 2020-2021 with multiple pharmaceutical stakeholders.  Requiring experimental design, budgetary planning, resource allocation and delegation with multiple groups, teamwork, data collection and analysis, report generation, and strict deadline adherence.

Responsible for all phases of project life cycle including initiation, planning, execution, performance/monitoring, and project closure.

Research Project Manager

Responsible for oversight and management of all laboratory activities, orders, mouse colony maintenance, collaborative communications, and laboratory projects  

Utilize and train employees on relevant technologies and performance of necessary techniques of bench laboratory science

Design project outline, obtain necessary resources, coordinate task scheduling, and oversee project lifecycle development

Communicate with team and collaborators on project progression, needs, and deadlines

Submit and maintain all necessary documentation for laboratory compliance with organizational, state, and federal regulations

Knowledge and experience with software for mouse colony and project management

Senior Research Specialist

Primarily responsible for providing laboratory support to the Senior Research Specialist. 

Included in the mouse colony management process, also support laboratory by performing tissue digestion, genotyping, PCR and qPCR, and assisting laboratory scientists with various project processes

Research Specialist

Southeastern Behavioral Hlthcr

Oversight of a caseload of up to fifty clients with assistance of clients having a variety of mental health and co-occurring disorders to obtain resources for assistance in housing, employment, and nutrition. 

Follow-up with clients regularly and connect them with therapeutic, psychiatric, and primary care services. 

Oversee client access to medication management. 

Submit and maintain all relevant records for client support and progression

Case Manager

I add accelerant to aspiring project managers' career pivots ⛽

Unorthodox Project Manager who likes to help others break into project management in new and unique ways!

I do this by helping aspiring project managers ID pain points for why they aren't getting PM opportunities.
These typically present as one of three deficiencies:
> Lack of identified relevant experience
> Improper resume presentation
> Poor/underutilized tactics for networking

Once identified, we work through ways they can improve those pain points and leverage them appropriately for a new opportunity

Background about me and project management experience: 

I spent 7.5 years in laboratory bench science while gaining project management experience.  Obtained my PMP certification in 2018, was officially promoted to Research Project Manager in 2020, and now am a Senior Project Manager with our Enterprise Project Management Office, overseeing highly-visible strategic projects across our healthcare org's Midwest footprint.

Other PM experience:
- Project oversight of multiple preclinical gene therapies
- Project management of small molecule and repurposed drug screening projects
- Establishment of a standalone screening facility to collaborate with other research institutions, pharmaceutical, and therapeutics companies

taplio

The Battle

Jake Carroll

Logan Langin, PMP

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