Although she felt like a small fish in a big pond when she moved from Nashville, Tennessee, to study at the University of Pennsylvania, Jai Jai did pretty well. She delivered the class commencement speech at graduation, and she was the recipient of the Althea K. Hottel award, the highest honor given to a female graduate. 

After graduating in Economics and while she was doing her Master's in Business at Northwestern University, Jai Jai started an internship at Goldman Sachs. Later on, she worked at Morgan Stanley, managing trading and business development. She loved the energy and the pace of that room we usually see in movies full of traders yelling at each other, holding a phone between the cheek and the shoulder while taking notes. 

Jai Jai was doing great in her professional life, but she felt something was missing. 

I'm joined by Jai Jai Greenfield; she is the Managing Director at The YN Group, Inc, the first mobile platform for wine retailers. In addition, Jai Jai runs Wine Down, her happy place. Wine Down is a retail company built for the new normal, where Jai Jai channels her passion, knowledge, and energy about wine to create a collection of cool and fun wine accessories and gifts.

We talked about Jai Jai's journey from working on sales and trades on Wall Street, her first entrepreneurial endeavor in Harlem, closing her business, and then taking some detours and finding herself opening a new business again. She shared her incredible energy talking about partnerships in business, failure, success, Black representation in the wine industry, and much more. 

Some Questions I Ask:

• You say you wish you had maybe majored in something that spoke more to you; what kind of things are coming to mind? (7:23)
• What do you think you're going to do with yourself coming out of business school? (12:21)
• What gave you that confidence wanting to go into a store for wine, not liquor? (19:27)
• What was it like for Black wine producers to see you coming along with your wine store? What was that interaction like? (29:48)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

• Jai Jai's journey from Wall Street to entrepreneurship (8:36)
• What 9/11 produced in Jai Jai's mindset and what decision she made after that (14:28)
• Why Jai Jai decided to open a wine store in Harlem (17:49)
• Helping Black wine producers get visibility (28:39)
• Jai Jai talks about her work at MLT Management, Leadership for tomorrow (49:07)

Resources:

• Wine Down website
• Wine Down Instagram
• Wine Down Facebook
• Wine Down Twitter

Connect with Jai Jai:

• LinkedIn

Let's connect!

• Website
• Instagram

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