From Start-Up to Grown-Up

#7: Jennifer Dulski, Rising Team

Alisa Cohn

Jennifer Dulski is the Founder and CEO of Rising Team and author of the WSJ bestselling book Purposeful.

Jennifer Dulski has a wide range of executive experience including leadership roles at Facebook, Google, and Yahoo!, and founder, CEO, and president roles at early stage and scaling startups. She is currently CEO and founder of Rising Team, a company that provides tools, data, and community to turn managers into amazing coaches that build happier and more successful teams.

Prior to Rising Team, she led Facebook Groups, used by more than 1.5 billion people each month to create and participate in communities that matter to them. Her team was responsible for envisioning, building, and growing the Groups product. She also led the 2019 redesign of Facebook, “FB5,” to put communities at the center of the app.

Before Facebook, Dulski was president and COO of Change.org, a social enterprise company that empowers people to create campaigns for change. Under her leadership, Change.org grew 10x, from 18 million users to 180 million, developed a profitable business model, rebuilt its tech stack, and supported thousands of successful campaigns globally.


During our conversation, Jennifer shares her story of becoming the founder of a nonprofit when she was 21, how you can get fooled by thinking you have product market fit, why it's so helpful for founders to spend time at large companies, work/life mashup, and her love of acronyms.

[01:49] Overcoming Challenges

[03:20] Strengthening Teams with Similar Talents

[05:30] Why Jennifer Appreciates Honest Feedback

[08:45] Building a Nonprofit Company

[10:03] Structure of the Organization

[14:23] Developing Technology to Create a Consumer Product

[17:53] Truths of Being a Serial Founder

[26:12] Jennifer's Goal to Build Rising Team

[37:25] Vital Life Lessons Learned

[42:55] The Strength of Self-Confidence

[49:55] Three Traits for Successful Movements

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