Meet Jennifer Bartkowski | CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jennifer Bartkowski and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jennifer, how has your perspective on work-life balance evolved over time?
I have been through all phases of work life balance – I have had varying levels of responsibilities in my career and have been married with kids, divorced with kids and now an empty-nester with adult-ish kids. There were times in my career, pre-kids, that I had very little balance. Once I had kids, I strived to achieve both at work and at home and it was a struggle and a juggle, for sure. Today, my own health and wellness is a priority and I strive for the kind of balance that allows me to be the best version of myself both at home and at the office. In addition, I think that today, I should be serving as a role model for girls and other female professionals as to what “balance” can look like, so I take all of my vacation, I am vulnerable about where I succeed and where I fail, I schedule around personal events and more. But I have said more than once “I am a good CEO and a good mom but rarely on the same day!”.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a proud graduate of Texas A&M University. At Texas A&M, I was a member of Alpha Phi Omega, a co-ed service organization. I loved doing community service and leading others through engaging in their community. As a senior in college, I met with an advisor about my future and he encouraged me to pursue this passion – in fact, he surprised me by sharing that that work could be a paying job! So, I pursued a Master of Public Administration with a Nonprofit Management specialty and started a career in fundraising and nonprofit leadership. After working for two United Ways, as a consultant and for other nonprofits, I started at Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas in 2009 as Chief Development Officer and five years later, found myself as the very proud CEO of GSNETX. After nearly 14 years at GSNETX, I am most proud of the environment we have created to innovate and create opportunities for girls. In 2018, we launched the first ever STEM Center of Excellence and over the years, we’ve created unique programs in mental health, outdoor leadership, technology and more, all in partnership with subject matter experts in the community. Today, I am very proud of how we are reimagining ourselves to be the right organization for girls in North Texas. Leadership always comes with challenges. I am fortunate to be on a forever learning journey, participating in both formal and informal leadership programs. I have experienced great successes and unfortunate failures but I have learned from all of them. I truly believe that it is the whole of my experiences, and how I have reacted to them, that has helped shape the leader I am today. I also credit my network, mentors, staff and board of directors for helping me evolve as a leader. And I also credit a very special group of friends who I’ve known since college (called the Bus Family because of the Texas A&M bus we own together) for keeping me humble and real and for giving me an outlet to really belong and be myself. That time is also important to being a leader. As a leader today, I strive to be authentic, first and foremost. I try to be both compassionate and inspirational, working to bring people along while painting a picture of our vision for the future. I am comfortable in the grey or the muddy middle but most people aren’t, so I try to communicate often and transparently with my staff and others. I work to be the best version of myself and am pretty conscious of what I’m good at and what I’m not. And I surround myself by the best and those working on being the best versions of themselves so that we can do the important work for the girls.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I currently live in Colleyville so I am halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth so I get the best of both worlds. If my best friend was in town, I might take them to The Drover and Mule Alley in the Stockyards – we would see the cattle drive and then head over for great food and drinks – a quintessential Texas experience. I might take them to Southlake for some shopping and hanging out at Jane for cocktails. I am in the midst of moving to Coppell, so a stop at the Sound would be in order. In the next few weeks, I’m attending the Tate Lecture Series and Broadway Dallas so maybe I’d bring them along to see some of the best that Dallas has to offer. And we’d definitely eat Tex-Mex and BBQ! For an outside activity, I’d love to take them to the Cedar Ridge Nature Preserve or Lake Grapevine. I absolutely love the Dallas Arboretum – it is the most beautiful space to take visitors – and we could finish with dinner at Smoky Rose. I’d spend a whole day in downtown Dallas at the Perot Museum, the Sixth Floor Museum and Klyde Warren Park – all super cool Dallas options. And we could do the Urban Adventure Quests in Dallas and Fort Worth to get around and see some sights. I would take them to see Girl Scout’s STEM Center of Excellence in southwest Dallas and probably stop by the Wilson District to see the office of Carson’s Village, where I serve as a founding Board Member. There is so much to do; they might need to stay an extra week!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
There are so many! But right now, I am very grateful for my team – the staff at Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas. As we navigate the post-COVID world, we are reimagining who we need to be for the girls of Northeast Texas. That starts first with us – making sure we are inclusive, that we are creating a space of belonging, that we are collaborating and that we are the best versions of ourselves. With this, the GSNETX team has gone through a lot of change (as have all of us through COVID) but that change continues as we dive into transformational thinking about the future of Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas. I am so proud of them and so grateful for their hard work. Our volunteers are also critical partners and they’ve been through a lot too. We are lucky to have such passionate advocates for the girls of Northeast Texas!

Website: www.gsnetx.org

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbartkowski/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenb92

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.k.bartkowski