(Jessica Wilson via Gotham Gal)
Joanne Wilson
When Joanne Wilson was in college, she rented a summer room in a fraternity from one of the brothers, Fred.
Now the two are married and they're a couple of New York's most involved, savvy startup investors.
Fred is a partner at Union Square Ventures; his investments include Zynga, Twitter and Foursquare. None of the companies in his portfolio are women-founded.
Joanne's investments are much different. Thirteen of her seventeen investments are tech companies. Of those thirteen tech companies, ten are women-founded including DailyWorth, Lover.ly, Nestio and Red Stamp.
She invests in anything she enjoys across all industries, from food, to gyms, to real estate. She has invested in publications, tech companies and brick and mortar businesses.
We spoke with Joanne about her career, her investment strategy, and why 2012 is the year of women.
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For a long time, Joanne Wilson was her family's breadwinner. At age 22 she was responsible for Macy's second largest cosmetics department, overseeing 100 other employees. She was the youngest product manager by 20 years.
It wasn't easy for women professionals to be taken seriously though, even at a department store.
"The things they did to women were really gross," Wilson recalls. "One of the men would try to put his hand up your leg, and all the guys would laugh -- so would a lot of the women," she says.
Wilson recalls a particular interview with Bloomingdales where she was sexually harassed. "It wasn't until I got back to my apartment that I realized what had happened -- I thought to myself, 'Oh my God.'"
Wilson found women were cruel to each other too. Her next boss was a woman who Wilson calls one of the meanest human beings she's ever encountered. "Literally, she gave me acne," says Wilson.
The abuse she faced as a young professional may be why Wilson is so supportive of women today.
Aside from abusive coworkers, Wilson faced another common career struggle. After joining a few small businesses and helping them grow leaps and bounds, she had the opportunity to start a company. But Wilson found herself torn between family and professional success.
"I thought, 'If I do this then I'll be a 24/7 lunatic and I won't be present in my children's lives,'" says Wilson.
Ultimately Wilson chose her children instead of a startup. She and Fred moved to the suburbs; Joanne stopped working to raise the kids.
But Wilson struggled as a stay-at-home mom. One play day was the final straw. "I said to Fred, 'I see these people talking at me but I'm not listing. I'm watching their mouths move and I'm thinking, I am going to kill all of them and then myself.' I realized I couldn't do it anymore."