the first jills, Co-Founders:
As Co-Founders of , we recognize the opportunities that the expanding workforce is making available to us, and we live the hurdles of it too. THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™is the beginning of turning ourselves head first into the career problems that we’ve experienced and have seen so many other experience also and carving a path towards solutions. We want to provide the vehicle to move women forward in their varied career or entrepreneurial pursuits, shine a light on their talents, offer support when and where they need it, to get us out in front of a new women-led workforce.
There’s still much to do, and much to figure out, we know that. If we want to lead in this new working space, we must first link arms, build our community, and embark on the journey together. Let’s get started!
from the first Jills & cofounders, Megan & Corinne
CORINNE NEIL
Corinne loves a good book and a sweetened cafe au lait. Add her joy of writing to the mix, and it's no surprise that Corinne has authored her own career story over the years carving out experiences that sparked her adventuresome spirit, honed her skills as a writer and educator, and satisfied her need for balance with family and friends.
As an educator, Corinne has worked in the US, Middle East, Canada and Europe. She uses her passion for teaching to travel the world and to empower others to see their talents, make a contribution, and love their stories. Through her consulting work at Corinne Neil's Writer's Studio, she has worked for Publishers and EdTech companies; she writes grants, copy, curriculum, and loves instructional design.
Corinne is a champion of working as a free agent. She loves the variety and the autonomy, and she recognizes that project-based employment keeps her current, fresh and constantly learning. She knows that her broad experiences provide her clients with much richer and more robust approaches to process and perspective. And she knows she's offering a smart way to get work done.
She also knows that being an independent professional is not without its problems. Finding time to do the work and hunt up the next project is a constant challenge. Working independently can separate solopreneurs from work mates, peer collaborators, mentors and a social scene. Then there's the ongoing entrepreneurial challenge of using the most efficient tools to manage business. Knowing that all of this is important for job satisfaction, critical for professional growth, and necessary to establish broader networks, Corinne set out to understand how to find and build authentic communities for independent workers so they could work sustainably and effectively. A shared vision ensued and Corinne cofounded THE JILLS, having been a Jill herself for over 20 years.
MEGAN A.C. BOSWELL
After leading corporate Design teams and building legacy brands over a 25 year creative career, Megan is recognized as a top Brand DNA creator & protector. She is valued for building profitable portfolios & smart strategic work cultures infused with collaboration, kindness and humor. Megan has earned patents for product and virtual innovation, developed national retail and customer experiences, & served as creative producer in the entertainment industry developing live-action feature films, live theater, animated & reality shows, apps, & virtual worlds.
Leveraging her expertise and passion for developing compelling brand stories, she launched 2PM Creative Lab, her Brand Strategy & Design business, which offers the project variety and personal client connection that she craves while boosting brands of varying scale, category and industry.
Consulting also allows her the flexible schedule that she couldn't have while tied to a corporate routine, to soak up as much time as possible with her husband and 3 teenagers. As a Jill, Megan found the work-life balance that was missing.
During her corporate career, Megan often bumped-up against the challenges of wasted time & cost spent trying to find quality freelancers. Even with large talented in-house staff and robust P&Ls, unless she was lucky to have a direct word-of-mouth referral, Megan was left with resource gaps, hindering team productivity and morale & leaving no reliable or easy way to grow the business and stay agile.
After 3 years of sitting on the "other side" as a Consultant herself, she was convinced she needed to find a solution to connect on-demand, yet hard-to-find, resources with the highly in-demand client needs. The shared vision and partnership with Corinne sparked, and THE JILLS was born.
OUR Story
with 45 years combined experience in fortune 500s, executive teams, multiMILLION DOLLAR budgets and consulting with start-ups, corporate giants & everyone in between, Megan & Corinne have built portfolio careers that have taught them to work smarter, live fuller, carve their own niche, & get the right talent for the right job at the right time.
They also know that writing all that work history down in one sentence makes it sound way easier than it really is.
The truth is these two shared many career stories over their years of friendship, and their camaraderie allowed them to learn from one another, hold each other accountable, share networks, collaborate, and ultimately create a space where they could both build the portfolio careers they craved. Before too long, it made sense to them to seek out others who might be doing the same thing. The power, it seemed, was in working solo, but not siloed.
Hungry for more people, more community and more learning, Corinne and Megan pedaled their (coincidentally) matching pink and orange bicycles around their city in search of ideas, experiences, and efficiencies in the project-based economy. They sought entrepreneurs of every variety from store-front owners to start up tech geniuses to frightfully qualified consultants operating out of their favorite locations in their homes. They had hundreds of conversations in coffee shops and wine bars, over the phone and over cups of tea, to try and understand the ins and outs of what was working in the project-based economy and what wasn’t. They were lucky enough to have a network that spanned the nation and even touched places around the globe. They learned from the best, cringed at the worst, and laughed with so many friends, colleagues, and businesses owners over shared stories of amazing projects, crazy projects, no-budget projects, failed projects, and deep-down-change the world projects that they knew it was time to embark on a new adventure.
And THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES ™ was born.
A community-driven platform that supports and promotes Independent professionals and connects business clients to project-based talent.
Here at THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ we support Consultants, Creatives, Independent Contractors, Solo Professionals & Entrepreneurs. We provide a platform to showcase talents, promote professional experiences, and provide opportunities to meet and collaborate. THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ offers smart and simple infrastructure tools that allow independents to run more efficient businesses. We help our community carve a road-map when needed, and get out of the way when they are racing forward. THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES™ encourages and facilitates mentoring. We create and value community. We share resources, ideas, talents, and projects. We honor and champion each other and our work style. Our platform connects independent professionals to each other, and to the businesses who seek and need their talents. And most importantly we have fun doing all of it!
Our Mission
It’s simple.
We Support & promote independents and build a community where we all lift each other to a place higher than we'd ever get to on our own.
Though our mission is simple, delivering against it certainly is not. So every day we rally on behalf of our passion and our Jills community.
OUR Members
The heart and soul of THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES ™ are the Jills themselves- the talented individuals and "dynamic-duo" teams who mentor, support, promote, connect, and collaborate with each other & provide specialized skills to the clients who need their expertise. They shine bright on their own, but are stronger and brighter when banded together.
The Jills represent a curated & vetted diverse range of expertise and level of experience. This broad talent spectrum not only fuels the member community, it also better serves the hiring clients providing a "one-stop-shop" for their varying project needs. As much as each Jill is quite unique, what they commonly share is the need to connect in a more personal way with peers & clients to build stronger and sustainable professional relationships.
Our members reflect the growing trend of Consultants, Creatives, Independent Contractors, Solo Professionals & Entrepreneurs who currently stand 53 million strong in the U.S. alone. Each year this project-based talent pool continues to grow at an explosive rate, due to the perfect storm of current global economic & technology trends, and shifts in work-life balance. While the number in total is growing rapidly, typically the individuals within this workgroup remain just that- individual... alone, siloed, and fragmented.
We believe in 'power in numbers' to be seen and to be heard and we proudly and happily toot each others' horn, since most Jills are too humble, or quite frankly, too darn busy running their businesses to do it for themselves.
Beyond their core professional skills, our Jills rank high behaviorally in: emotional intelligence, multi-tasking, open communication, and peer support- all honed from adeptly juggling multiple clients & multiple projects. Although most of our Jills are women, in keeping with the higher percentage of U.S. independent professionals, THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES ™ is focused on building Community, Collaboration, and personal Connections, and all who rally to our mission and work style are welcome.
The Jills are changing the way we work and are creating a workforce revolution.
OUR Clients
Clients are from large corporations, new start-ups and established mid-size scale businesses. Whether the clients are a one-man-band business, a small yet mighty lean team, or are power-packed at 1000 cubicles deep, they ALL come to THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES ™ knowing that hiring the right person, for the right job, for just the right amount of time is a smarter and more cost-effective way to do business. Period.
When all business resources shift in times of Start-up, Sprint, or Stall, the Jills fill in the gaps for clients and for each other for their own projects.
We provide an a la carte & on-demand talent pool to compliment and augment in-house staff. Our Jills take the guess-work out of the unpredictability and stress of internal resource planning during downtimes and spikes. Today's market demands real-time customer satisfaction. Businesses can't afford to miss the pace. Our clients know that having agile specialized talent at the ready is the best way to forward their goals.
Not only is hiring a Jill a more efficient way to do business, it is also the new norm as corporate downsizing continues, baby boomers retire leaving gaping brainpower holes, work-life balance is a demand now and not a wish, new parents refuse to miss child-rearing years, and millennials buck the 9-5 "stay until your gold watch" grind. Let's face it- the notion of a traditional desk job is outdated. And it should be, when technology allows us to work wisely at our convenience and peak time of productivity.
Our clients also know how difficult and time consuming it is to find high-quality specialized project-based talent that has been vouched and vetted, and can hit the ground running. Without a rare and lucky direct personal referral, finding an independent professional is a needle in the haystack. And the large big-box freelance hiring sites, where competition is valued over community, can be as scary as going on a blind date- you just never know who will show up. THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES ™ provides clients a safe and smart platform to match their specific project needs to a specific Jill, according to their preference of expertise, geography, and years of experience.
OUR Promise
THE JILLS OF ALL TRADES ™ puts people above profit and Process. We promise to protect your privacy and your best interest. We are mission-driven and actually mean it.
our JILLS ECONOMY
We are proud early adopters of the new P2P (Peer to Peer) Economy that you see reflected in our JILLS project-based talent platform, taxi cab apps, vacation apartment rentals, artisan on-line shops, and the easy exchange of recycled fashions.
By aggregating undervalued and underutilized services, we create a smart and easy access for customers. We believe in cutting out useless steps to getting the product to the person. Think of the JILLS OF ALL TRADES ™ as the modern bulletin board in your local post office, but without the long waiting lines ;-)
