Episode Summary:

Successful MBA leaves high-paying Wall Street job to build a start-up dedicated to helping women manage their careers and families. Joyce Cadesca tells us why she made this move, and in this As It Happens series, visits with us three times over the last year to talk about the challenges and wins she’s racked up. The truth: it hasn’t been easy, but for this single mom of color the path she’s on is a true life passion, replete with reinvention and re-learning, but no regret.

Sydney Finkelstein 

Syd Finkelstein is the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He holds a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from Columbia University. Professor Finkelstein has published 25 books and 90 articles, including the bestsellers Why Smart Executives Fail and Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent, which LinkedIn Chairman Reid Hoffman calls the “leadership guide for the Networked Age.” He is also a Fellow of the Academy of Management, a consultant and speaker to leading companies around the world, and a top 25 on the Global Thinkers 50 list of top management gurus. Professor Finkelstein’s research and consulting work often relies on in-depth and personal interviews with hundreds of people, an experience that led him to create and host his own podcast, The Sydcast, to uncover and share the stories of all sorts of fascinating people in business, sports, entertainment, politics, academia, and everyday life.

Joyce Cadesca

Joyce Cadesca is an experienced general management leader who is devoted to social justice, inclusion, and equity. Her corporate work experience includes finance, strategy, and human resources roles at leading global Fortune 100 companies such as Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley. Her life purpose is to empower individuals to achieve their educational, family, and professional goals. She is the Founder and President of famHQ LLC, a tech-enabled family concierge, holistic coaching, and dedicated childcare service designed to maximize time, energy, and success for busy working mothers. Joyce was inspired to create famHQ based on her challenges as a busy corporate mom and through her work as a professional development coach and child-care advocate for underserved families. Through partnerships with reliable companies, supportive co-founders, and an experienced in-house staff, Joyce offers an affordable, user-friendly “one stop app” through famHQ to give working moms access to resources that help you set goals and crush them. 

Outside of famHQ, Joyce serves as a Professional Development Coach at Management Leadership for Tomorrow, working with MBA students as they define their career paths. Also, as Resident Director of ‘A Better Chance Lower Merion’, Joyce advocates for providing educational access to underserved high school students. Her previous nonprofit work experience also includes education program management and classroom teaching. Joyce earned an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University.

Insights from this Episode

• Joyce’s process of being admitted into Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
• Joyce’s experience at J.P. Morgan
• Joyce’s experience as a single working mom
• About famHQ
• About having co-founders in famHQ
• How to deal with doubt as a entrepreneur
• About the constant famHQ adaptation process to changes
• Joyce’s future plans for famHQ
• Why famHQ shifted their focus to moms of color

Quotes from the Show:

• "I do believe in the idea of a calling, I believe that I was called to help young students to gain the opportunities that I was exposed to, because my life was so drastically changed by those opportunities ”- Joyce Cadesca in “The Sydcast” [09:31]
• “[About shifting from the for-profit to non-profit sector] What I have gained by leaving that behind far exceeds the salary that I had, not monetarily right?, not financially, but the piece of mind that I’m doing what I love and what I was called to do, a balanced person, it exceeds that money that I left behind”- Joyce Cadesca in “The Sydcast” [19:01]
• “I have to admit there were moments, I think every entrepreneur has moments like this where you’re in the middle of a pandemic, your kid is home half time or whatever the situation is, or you’re maybe I should just go and do this the easy way, maybe I should go back to my stable corporate life”- Joyce Cadesca in “The Sydcast” [38:53]
• “[About facing doubt as an entrepreneur] I used to say when I was in one of those situations, well what’s the worst thing that could happen? And not always but usually the worst thing that could happened is something you can deal with" - Sydney Finkelstein in “The Sydcast” [41:00]
• “[About entrepreneurship] Be ready for the grind, the resilience and resourcefulness it takes to get through some tough nights, and also the self-awareness to work with partners who may not agree with you”- Joyce Cadesca in “The Sydcast” [1:02:50]

Stay Connected:

Sydney Finkelstein

Website: http://thesydcast.com

LinkedIn: Sydney Finkelstein

Twitter: @sydfinkelstein

Facebook: The Sydcast

Instagram: The Sydcast

Joyce Cadesca

Instagram: Joyce Cadesca

LinkedIn: Joyce Cadesca

FamHQ

LinkedIn: famHQ | Family Concierge

Instagram: famHQ 

Website: http://www.famhq.org/

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This episode was produced and managed by Podcast Laundry.