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Prior to Vjournal, Natalee worked in corporate environments as well as startups that have become multi-billion dollar brands.  These included Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouse Coopers) and GTE (now Verizon), as well as Nextel Communications beginning with its launch in 1994, and Sprint’s wireless division prior to launch in 1997 until it reached over $5 billion in revenues just a few years later.  Natalee’s executive responsibilities grew to include corporate strategy, operations, marketing, finance, sales execution, and customer retention. 

As a consultant and senior executive for a number of startups, Natalee also assisted in raising millions of dollars in capital, developing partnerships with Fortune 500 brands, and creating programs for sales teams as large as 35,000 members at 13,000 points of distribution.  Her leadership style earned high praise in the 8-episode documentary series “Start-up Junkies” on the MOJO HD TV network (also available on iTunes and Hulu.com) which has become required watching in several prominent MBA programs on entrepreneurship.  As viewers of the series tracked her down online, her personal blog quickly obtained a steady following of business people with a 70% male demographic, putting her in a unique position to champion gender equality in the executive suite by showcasing female leadership that resonates favorably with both men and women. 

Natalee’s leadership style did not emerge by accident:  Before entering the private sector, she joined the University of California, Berkeley´s Industrial Psychology program where she designed and taught classes in statistics, business management, leadership, and organization design while working towards her PhD.  She left the program soon after her master’s degree because she longed to apply what she had learned from the inside a company rather than as an academic.

Throughout her business career, she continued her study of leadership and business management research as it pertained to gender differences in the workplace because she found that her application of these findings directly aided her career success.  But she was disappointed that over the 20-year span between her life as an academic and that as a business executive, little had been done to bring the research findings from universities and leadership institutions all over the world to the hundreds of thousands of women in leadership roles that could also learn from them.  Natalee established Vjournal as an online news and networking portal to help more women become effective, confident, healthy, wealthy leaders.   The material is presented in a sassy, conversational tone which many men have enjoyed reading as well – creating the dialog needed for change to occur.

Natalee is a published author and received her M.A. in Industrial Psychology, with honors, from the University of California at Berkeley and her B.B.A., Summa cum Laude, from Bernard M. Baruch College of the City University of New York in Business Management.   She lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington.  More details on her executive career can be found in her LinkedIn Profile.