“[Change] can mean no longer fitting in where you fit in before. [Change] can mean judgment from friends and family, and [change] can mean it may get really hard before it gets simple.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: My name is Jenn Fasano Holgerson. I am the owner of JFC, a business consulting firm for female entrepreneurs. I own and operate Babes in Business Long Island, a networking organization that hosts events, workshops, retreats, and more for women in business. My passion is simple; it’s to show women that anything is possible in their lives.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: From my very first job experience all the way through my corporate career, and now in entrepreneurship, I have assisted women in not only looking and feeling confident and beautiful but also encouraging them to chase their desires and follow their own passions. I never went to college, but from the moment I graduated high school, I found myself in a leadership role. I always knew I was meant to lead people, but at a young age, I wasn’t quite sure where my strong desire to lead would take me. After having my second child in 2013, that high-demand career with long hours, travel, and rigid schedules started to just not work for me. Simultaneously, I stumbled across the network marketing industry and quickly saw I could follow my passion for leadership, which is what I recognize now as my entrepreneurial spirit. I actually got fired from my corporate job while building my side hustle in NWM, and it was the best thing that ever happened to me! It allowed me to follow my passions and help more people, all while being home with my kids and ultimately led me to where I am now.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: One thing I have learned is that change is good. Although it can be scary, we can never grow unless we change. And change can mean a lot of things. It can mean no longer fitting in where you fit in before. It can mean judgment from friends and family, and it can mean it may get really hard before it gets simple. But it’s all worth it if, in the end, you show up as the best version of yourself!
Q: What does feminism mean to you? A: Feminism, to me, means being proud to be a leader and a woman. It means knowing that, as women, we are told to wear many hats, and we do, but it doesn’t mean we have to do it in angst. We can do it with pride and confidence. And do it on our own terms.
A fun fact about me: I ran the New York City Marathon in 2017.
“Just do what you love; it’ll take you somewhere far.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I am passionate about anything that requires creativity.
I am currently a brand and marketing designer, and I also enjoy calligraphy and DIYing crafts as a hobby.
Some say I inhale and exhale the art of designing. I’ve been designing for almost half of my life because of our family’s printing business. My eye for design has been my bloodline since I became an entrepreneur.
I found joy in creating for other people. I formally started doing this for a living in 2018.
Before I worked with actual brands, I tried offering my design services for free to support my friends who are just starting out, and that became the foundation on how I was able to have a good portfolio to attract my first paying clients.
I chose my career path as a designer for other companies because I know they deserve nothing less when it comes to building a credible visual language. My creative solutions are the ones I wished all entrepreneurs had easy access to when starting out.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: I grew up in the province where children from my era spent playtime at rice fields.
My parents were blessed with four daughters, me being the third child.
Creativity runs in our family. My dad and my eldest sister love photography A LOT. My dad is an engineer and used to be a well-known photographer in our locality, while my sister pursued professional fashion photography while juggling it with her corporate work. My second sister loves modeling and is also an online beauty influencer, our youngest is an architect in the making while my mom is the greatest cheerleader and support system in the family.
It was funny that as love for art is present in the family, I was the only one who never learned how to draw. During our younger years, my sisters enjoyed creating handmade paper dolls, coloring books, and sketching gowns…and I find it so boring! I enjoyed lettering my classmates’ names instead. I spent most of my childhood in our little printing shop sitting on the computer desk, exploring MS Paint, Print Artist (it’s like Canva during 90’s), or watching my uncle photoshop ID pictures of our customers. [She laughs.]
I may say that I was exposed to the digital world of art, especially graphic design, as early as six years old. And it is still clear for me as if it just happened yesterday how I really loved creating my own play-money, greeting cards, and fair tickets from scratch then print them in our dot matrix printer and manually cut them with scissors.
During my elementary age, I developed my love for graphic design even more. I was the youngest staff in our shop to be able to attend to our customers’ requests like photoshopping blurred documents, enhancing photos for reprinting, and creating cover arts for school projects while kids my age only played video games.
When I entered high school, I became our official newspaper’s layout artist. I’ve designed numerous shirts and uniforms for different events, and that continued till college where I sometimes received monetary rewards for my work.
At first, I never knew that graphic design could be a decent profession. So, what I chose to take on during college was a bachelor’s degree in political science and shifted to mass communication. Although I was not able to finish my degree and contrary to what others think of me, I am finally earning a multiple 6-figure as a graphic design specialist.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: I could not stress this enough, but this is the value I want to share with others: *Just do what you love, it’ll take you somewhere far.* My story has been a roller-coaster ride. I became a parent at the early age of 19. Since then I never stopped exploring options on how I can make a living. My life partner and I paused from studying to become full-time parents and providers and we thought that if we didn’t finish college our career is bound to nowhere. My parenthood journey turned my world upside-down that it made me forget myself and my interests. My child became my everything and subconsciously forget what I loved doing – designing. It took me years of exploring what’s missing and why I still feel empty even we both earn enough. Until my partner and I decided to quit our corporate job and build a small digital printing company from scratch, our capital was from loans and credit card, our knowledge in equipment operations are all self-taught. I started designing again for our own business and I felt so alive. Everything went well from there. Until the pandemic came, back-to-back lockdowns affected our operations. To escape bankruptcy, I made a shift and use my design skills to offer it to a bigger market, and that’s when I became a freelance brand designer and it allowed me to earn 5x of our business’s profit. Without having to worry about the pandemic and lockdowns. I was able to reach greater heights for my family. Truly, doing what you love won’t fail you. It’ll take you farther than what you have imagined. Some have judged me that I could do more and earn more only if I followed the career path my degree will take me. But I chose clarity over certainty. My passion gave me clarity more than anything else and I know for sure that as long as I use this skill to help others, I am on the right path.
Q:What does feminism mean to you?
A: For me, feminism is standing up that you are more than “just a woman”. It’s equal rights = equal access to opportunities. I believe that feminism leans more towards equality, not female superiority. And that equality is what all genders deserve, not just us women.
MORE FROM CAMILLE: I am a corporate escapee, and now the creative mastermind behind Miles Creative Co. (a brand and marketing design company I started a year ago). I live in the province of Nueva Ecija, Philippines. I have two daughters. I love having multiple businesses. I have an online boutique, and I also help my partner manage our small restaurant business.
“The most valuable thing I’ve learned in life is to never lose the lesson life teaches.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I am passionate about living my best life, which includes helping others overcome life challenges, find hope and purpose, and doing all I can to support the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. Whether I’m speaking to a specific group or at a national conference, my passion and determination is to inspire audiences to step beyond their limitations and guide them to discover the power within and redefine what personal success truly means in this adventure called: LIFE.
The harder question is how I got to this point.
Like most people, I have had some tragically sad challenges. The worst was in 2006, when my daughter Jena lost her battle with cystic fibrosis. It was then that my whole world changed. For a long time following that terrible day, it was hard to call up the strength to take action, to move forward, to take a chance at life. I had been taught to look for and find gratitude in each moment, but when my little girl “moved up” to heaven at the age of thirteen, there was nothing I could see or find other than my grief and pain. I felt I had no choice. But in time, I learned that every day, I get to choose how to live.
I believe in hope, in embracing the beauty in the broken. Life always presents us gifts, yet sometimes those gifts are brutally disguised as pain and suffering. My daughter once told me that pain is not a valid reason for stopping, so I continued on. I’ve taken many steps to get to a place where I can take charge of my life to become an award-winning author of two books: Beyond Breathing and See You at Sunset, a professional speaker, and a national advocate for The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. I’ve taken steps to stay happily married for twenty-eight years to my handsome husband Marc, and I’ve been blessed to watch my son marry the love of his life, which was the best day of mine.
Crisis, fear, and the anxiety of crumbling under life’s challenges have crossed my path so many times, I’ve learned that if I could change my attitude, my health, and my mental well-being, my life would ultimately change as well. Each challenge I faced in life taught me something more about myself and the world around me. Every decision I made, whether I was presented with a multitude of options, or no choices at all, changed who I am today.
Here’s the thing, somewhere deep in my soul, every journey and every obstacle I faced helped bring me to a place where I can feel calm among the chaos. Every day, I give thanks for a grateful soul, a mind that’s confident, and an open heart that’s compassionate.
That’s what I’m passionate about and want to share that with as many people who want to hear it.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: My childhood was like most everyone else, complicated with drama, trauma, and not easily summed up as good or bad. I was a chubby middle child, diagnosed with dyslexia in 2nd grade, and my parents divorced while I was in the 8th grade. I lived in Germany with my great aunt when I was fourteen for a ‘cultural experience.’ I graduated from high school a year early and that same year, at age 16, I permanently moved out of my childhood house after an argument with my mother. I was pregnant before I got married and had two children before I was twenty-five. Both my children were born with a fatal genetic disease, cystic fibrosis, which currently has no cure. I’ve dealt with abandonment issues, weight issues, depression, and anxiety. All of which made me who I am today.
All our lives, all our stories, make us who we are, it’s up to us how we decide that value.
Q: What would you like others to learn from your story?
The most valuable thing I’ve learned in life is to never lose the lesson life teaches.
For all of my life, I’ve had a love of learning, and I’m pretty sure that’s why God, with his or her infinite wisdom and sense of humor, decided to fill the first half of my life with one crisis after another. Through all the trials and many errors, I’ve come to see that life’s challenges, including reaching midlife, doesn’t have to be a crisis.
Wouldn’t you agree that sometimes life can come at you fast and a sucker punch can land without any warning? I’ve been there. I get it. In a split second, you’re in the middle of life-changing choices, insurmountable obstacles, and heartbreaking hardships. It’s what you do with the lesson just presented to you that can change the path you’re on. Chances are, someone has been down that path before and can help guide you out, if you let them.
If by me sharing my painful and crazy life journey can reach out and touch your heart in even the smallest way possible, and help you deal with and let go of the crises and pain in your life, then I’ll feel my words and stories have a purpose beyond what they already hold for me.
My advice to you is to share your story, it could make all the difference in someone else’s life.
Q: What does feminism mean to you?
A: Feminism, to me, is an emotionally charged word, placing a person as ‘a feminist’ if they are for feminism or they are ‘a non-feminist’ against feminism. To me, this is divisive, and I’m not about labels, division, or exclusion as much as I am for united, equal, and collective for the common good of all civilization.
It’s was such a powerful and resurfaced word that Feminism was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2017.
Feminism, by definition, is equality of both sexes, but its common understanding is the passionate responsibility of the equality of women in the workforce, home, and political front. Its wave of enthusiastic ideology and emotion can cause more opposition than necessary.
For me, I’d instead focus on the constructive influence of women helping women. The underlying power that comes from a place of growth, humanity, and the ability to rise together while helping one another achieve each individual’s best possible life. The alliance of women reaching back and helping those who are struggling is where the real strength lies. Women being brave in adversity, sharing their story to help others, and using their voice against injustice is what I support. We, as women, can do so much to change the landscape of our future when we rise up, lean in, and stand tall without having to put down, degrade, or alienate any opposition that confronts the process of growth.
“I see so many people scared to embrace creativity, playfulness, or spontaneity. They fear embarrassment, humiliation, rejection, or failure. It is my wish to help people unplug from those fears…”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I can tell you that I am so passionate about living each day of my life sprinkled with creativity.
Every single “today” is a good day to learn something new, try something new, and create something new.
I find it interesting as I reflect back on my 45 years of living this life that my interests in marketing, graphic design, theatre, music, coaching, spirituality, and personal development all intertwine with each other, although it may seem like they don’t go together at all.
Somehow these interests bring me a great deal of joy, gratitude, and balance.
I do experience struggles just like everyone else does, yet I tend to look at those as opportunities I get to experience, learn from, and grow from.
My mantra is “Everything that happens is for my benefit.”
Like many other entrepreneurs, I had to make a pivot in 2020, that is when I began working with some amazing mentors and digging deep to identify how I could make money doing something I love.
I began producing plays online, hosted Zoom sessions with the actors, and streamed the plays on Facebook and YouTube.
Last year, we finally got back on stage for a live production of the Broadway musical “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.”
We had six nominations with Broadway World Los Angeles and went on to win Best Special Event. When I am not working on plays, I help entrepreneurs create marketing content, pitch decks, graphics, social media posts, swag, and banners for live events, video editing, and book publishing.
I also teach people how to use PowerPoint and Canva.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: I was born in Utah and had many cousins growing up to play with.
My family and I moved to Southern California when I was eight, and that is when I met my best friend, Scott.
We have been pretending ever since; he is my theatre partner and he is the actor as I am more behind the scenes.
We loved sketch comedy shows like SNL and MadTV and would often put on our own skits for our friends and family.
I became a teenage mom in high school and stayed in school till I graduated. I took some vocational classes in video production while working in a movie theater.
When I was 19, Scott and I went to work at Disneyland in the character department. I enjoyed portraying Mikey Mouse for several years before I got myself a grown-up job in mortgage. That was the best job I ever had. It just didn’t pay a livable wage.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: I’ve been told that when you are creating something you are connected to divinity.
I see so many people scared to embrace creativity, playfulness, or spontaneity. They fear embarrassment, humiliation, rejection, or failure.
It is my wish to help people unplug from those fears and hold a safe space for them to have the experience and joy that comes with creating something, making art, making music, writing a book, or anything else creative.
Q: What does feminism mean to you?
A: I can see this from a few different perspectives. I would like to think of feminism as being unapologetically myself, as a woman.
Loving myself unconditionally. Embracing what makes me a woman. Celebrating my body, my hormones, my emotions, my choices, what brings me peace, and what completes me.
Building communities with loving, wise, caring, nurturing women to heal and grow with.
I don’t see feminism as a way to tear down or exclude men, but I can see how some may interpret feminism that way.
“…every challenge, every late night, and every tough decision has taught me that I am stronger than I ever thought possible.”
Q: What are you passionate about?
A: I have been in the talent acquisition field for over a decade now and have been managing people from the junior level up to those who have been in the industry longer than I have.
One of the most rewarding aspects of being a manager is watching your team grow and succeed.
I’m passionate about mentoring, coaching, and helping individuals unlock their potential. I find great satisfaction in identifying someone’s strengths, nurturing their talents, and guiding them toward achieving their personal and professional goals.
I believe that a positive work environment is crucial for success. I’m passionate about cultivating a culture where people feel respected, motivated, and empowered. This includes advocating for work-life balance, promoting diversity and inclusion, and ensuring open communication within the team.
Q: What were your younger years like?
A: I grew up in a close-knit family that emphasized the importance of education, hard work, and kindness. My parents were my first role models; they taught me the values of perseverance, dedication, and empathy.
Growing up, we weren’t wealthy, but we were rich in love, support, and encouragement. My parents always made sure that I had access to good education and opportunities to explore my interests.
Academically, I was always driven. I loved learning and excelled in my studies, often pushing myself to be at the top of my class. Subjects like English and Mathematics fascinated me because they allowed me to understand people and cultures, while math and science challenged my analytical skills. Education was more than just a means to an end—it was a way to explore the world and my place in it.
Q: What is something valuable you’d like others to know?
A: One of the most important things I’ve learned is the power of resilience. Life as a single mother can be overwhelming, and it’s easy to feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. But every challenge, every late night, and every tough decision has taught me that I am stronger than I ever thought possible.
Resilience isn’t about never falling; it’s about getting back up every time. One of the hardest lessons I had to learn was that asking for help doesn’t mean you’re failing—it means you’re human. Whether it’s leaning on family, friends, or community resources, reaching out for support is a strength, not a weakness.
It’s easy to feel like you’re falling short when juggling so many roles, but remember that you are enough just as you are. The love, effort, and dedication you pour into your family and work are what truly matter. Your journey doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s to be valid and valuable.
Q: What does feminism mean to you?
A: To me, feminism means advocating for equality, respect, and the freedom for all individuals—especially women—to make choices that align with their values, ambitions, and needs without judgment or restriction. It’s about breaking down the barriers that have historically limited women’s opportunities and recognizing the diverse ways in which women contribute to society, both inside and outside the home.
Feminism, to me, is about embracing the full spectrum of what it means to be a woman today—strong, vulnerable, ambitious, nurturing, and unapologetically ourselves. It’s about fighting for a better world not just for ourselves, but for future generations.
MORE FROM IHRA: As I always say: Travel like there’s no tomorrow. Dance as if no one is watching. Laugh until your jaw hurts. And love as if it’s your first and last.
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