Today we’d like to introduce you to Jessie Young.

Hi Jessie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Hindsight offers a cogency that lived experience does not. Where I am today is not only not where I started, but it was not even on the map. My life’s cartography is more closely described by to the opportunism of early explorers than the precision of modern pilots. It’s impossible to A-B test which yields greater success. Perhaps this is because the two are a false binary. I have always been precise about who I am as a human being, and opportunistic about what I do as a human doing.

Today, what I do is solve problems to take new businesses to their first ten figures. I do this in my capacity as COO of Nivoda, a diamond marketplace, and also as a board member to several early-stage start-ups, venture partner and advisor. Outside of work, I am also a yoga teacher and fiction writer. I live in New York City, and travel voraciously.

I began my career on the opposite side of the world, in Queensland, Australia, where I was born. I studied judiciously and earnestly, in two Brisbane-based law schools, and at the University of Amsterdam in philosophy. At my law school valedictory I quoted a Greek soldier and poet whose sentiment I admire: “We do not rise to the level of our aspiration, we fall to the level of our training”. I believed then that my training determined my path. I believe now that training will raise the floor, but curiosity will open the door. For a life junkie, following my curiosity led me to the Inns of Court, into management consulting, and then early-Uber. Here, I was fortunate to build a finance and strategy function through IPO with an amazing team of APAC colleagues, before launching new lines of business to the first billion several times over. The doors my curiosity took me through led me from Sydney, to Singapore, to New York; through company acquisitions and closures, team-building from 3 to 3,500, and billion dollar businesses.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Life is not linear. It is a series of bumps and curls, roundabouts and potholes. Notwithstanding, it’s a five star ride.

The biggest challenge I faced was recovering from anorexia, which I developed during covid. At the time, I was launching grocery delivery in five mega-markets with a very small team. The business was growing hyperbolically. I was so energised by the process I lost myself in the swirl of problems, people, and impact. I was on calls almost 20 hours a day and stopped eating on the zoom camera. At first what was something practically explicable became much more. It was a mechanism for order and control at a time when the world seemed to completely lack it. In the space of four months I lost 40% of my body-weight and withered. While my career thrived, I wilted under the panacea of success. To recover, you have to choose to survive. That meant fundamentally redefining success, ambition and value.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am the COO of Nivoda, the world’s largest marketplace of diamonds and gemstones. I am known for solving difficult problems for the first time, marrying growth and value. Put simply, I know where to press on the marketplace heuristic to take businesses sustainably up the growth curve. I do this through a combination of strategy, commercials, and teams; the quintessential operator-generalist who cut their teeth in early tech.

What sets me apart is my principled resilience. I pride myself on having the courage to change what I can and the wisdom to identify what I cannot. In business terms, this means I’m usually undaunted by the big hairy goal. For example, my team and I were responsible for launching the world’s first cannabis delivery on an on-demand food delivery platform. In 2022, in Toronto, the first cannabis delivery on the Uber Eats marketplace occurred because of my team. I am so proud of what we did that day and the years that followed: we broke the internet with 70 million impressions in a matter of minutes, we set the course for a best day of sales that compounded daily, and we took a meaningful step in making the unfamiliar familiar and legitimizing safe, legal consumption.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
What makes a place excellent is also what makes it terrible. The thing I like and dislike most about New York is its abundance. There is so much opportunity. Most days, I start with a plan. By the time my day ends, that plan has evolved. It’s broken down with the G train, it’s stalled when a meeting cancelled, it’s cost a small fortune like the proverbial $100 “exit tax” if you live in Soho (IYKYK). But it’s also cracked open like a speak-easy doorway, strangers have become friends, new ideas have formed and old ones have gracefully fallen away. You can be anyone, and anything can happen. At the same time, anything can happen. Mindset means a lot in this environment.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://nivoda.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/finding_halo/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/