As co-founder of The Second Shift, Jenny Galluzzo lives her life committed to the empowerment of women through work. She is fiercely dedicated to shifting the path forward for women, encouraging them to forge their own career paths with confidence, intention and optimism.
As Head of Community, Jenny curates events across the country to bring members and business partners together, and she and her team are in close contact with members during the application process and beyond. As Head of Brand, she sets the strategy for messaging, communications, and content. Jenny has also used The Second Shift as an opportunity to connect with and help women beyond members, speaking regularly about career transitions, gender equity in the workforce, and becoming an agent for change.
Jenny recently launched initiatives at The Second Shift: Let’s Be Human-- Parenthood at Work, creating a best-practices guide to family leave for corporate clients such as Unilever and Google; and a career coaching platform where women hire coaches from within The Second Shift to optimize their career paths for long-term success.
Prior to starting The Second Shift, Jenny spent many years in journalism, researching, writing, hosting and producing for Good Morning America, News 12 and Plum TV. Jenny holds a BA from Duke University and an MS from the Columbia University School of Journalism. She lives in New York City with her two sons.
Can you tell us a little bit about Second Shift?
The Second Shift is a woman-owned, run, and focused business. The Second Shift provides a platform for women to control their own career journeys through access to high-level flexible jobs, career development, and community and for our employer clients to access an experienced and fully-vetted network of working professionals available to provide solutions for diverse talent needs.
With a community of 5,000+ women and a client list that includes Fortune 100 companies, the team vet, support and connect female experts across the U.S., The Second Shift is keeping women engaged in the workforce, improving diversity, and helping women rise to positions of power where they can make impactful choices for the next generations.
What insights drove you to Second Shift and what have you learned in your nearly ten years of running it?
I founded The Second Shift because it was solving a problem I was facing in my own life when one career path dead-ended and I was lost trying to figure out what to do next. I had two small children and saw first hand how leaving your job and having kids can negatively affect your sense of identity and self confidence. We built The Second Shift to give women the agency to navigate their career journeys without having to choose between work and family. 10 years ago we thought we were solving one small problem but we didn’t realize how deep the problem actually went: whether it is policy like paid leave and reproductive rights; systematic like gender inequality in every level of the workforce; or emotional like the struggle of invisible labor at home and at work– at the time we didn’t really see how pervasive this issue was in society and how invested we would become in finding solutions.
What advice do you have for female executives looking to make a career pivot?
Go for it! But don’t just jump into the deep end – do some deep inner work first. Understand why you want to leave and create a game plan before you leave your job.
There is a lot of identity, ego and confidence that is tied up in our careers and it can rock your foundation of self if you don’t have a very clear vision of why you are going, where you want to go, and a pretty solid plan on how to get there. Do the leg work first, then jump.
What have you learned from running Second Shift that changes the way you think about women in the workplace?
We are working in a system that wasn’t set up for us and change takes time. This is a marathon and while it looks like nothing changes there have been enormous shifts in the culture and workplace over the past 10 years. I can tell you that 10 years ago the conversation about women in the workforce, benefits, invisible labor, gender equity, remote work was completely different. My partner Gina and I had to explain why women needed flexibility and the issues around having no women in the c-suite. There is now so much data and transparency around gender issues and that’s exciting and gratifying because we were part of the change… but there is still so much work to be done!!
What are the biggest challenges you see impacting female executives?
Oy… that’s too big a question to answer here.
You recently started a podcast; can you tell us a bit more about that?
I come from a journalism background and have been listening to podcasts forever. My partner Gina Hadley has been urging me to do this for years but I assumed there were enough podcasts and didn’t really have a vibe on what would set us apart. We started doing webinars in Covid and I loved it. Then one day I woke up and was like fuck it, this might be fun and I love it! I interview people (mostly women) who I think will be interesting and inspiring to the women in our community with a focus on the intersection of women x work x wellbeing. Please listen and subscribe!! https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-second-shift/id1639973030
Who are women you admire right now?
I really miss Nancy Pelosi. I wish her well and appreciate her service. However, I love politics and watching it is my sport and Nancy was such a fierce and fearless leader and such an inspiration.
What’s one thing you cannot live without?
Very strong coffee.
What’s one trend you are watching closely?
I follow reproductive rights very closely. It’s not work per se, but I believe access to reproductive rights and benefits for families are foundational to the ability to have agency over your own life and career. It’s like a bellwether of where things are politically and culturally. There are major setbacks, clearly, but also spaces where there’s an opportunity to move things forward– like paid leave and childcare benefits.
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