Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacqueline O’donnell

Hi Jacqueline, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?

The journey to becoming a thought leader in math education began as a precocious and quiet child. I gravitated toward games and puzzles involving logic and patterns and the challenges they presented. In school, this translated to me becoming a very strong math student, noticing patterns that existed between numbers and shapes. Though I was very good at math, I didn’t quite know what to do with it, since the only math-based careers I ever learned about involved going into engineering, finance, or teaching. I explored finance in business school and ultimately found a love of marketing, earning a degree in public relations. After working in public relations and marketing, I felt like I wanted my career to align more with my caring nature and desire to help people. I leaned into teaching, and naturally, I gravitated toward math.

I worked as a tutor through post-grad and began my first full-time teaching position as I concluded my masters program in the spring of 2020. I met my new students twice before the entire world shifted online due to the pandemic. I adapted to this new teaching model, learning as we went, desperately trying to hold the attention of children and teenagers in a very uncertain world, and teach them math. And the answers to the question, “but when will we ever use math?” felt more and more irrelevant to their unknown futures.

With the increased demand for tutoring in a post-pandemic world and my entrepreneurial spirit, I left my classroom teaching position in the summer of 2022 to pursue tutoring full-time and continue revamping math education as we’ve known it. It was then that the Math Refresh Education Company was born. I was the “Jack of all trades” in year one, tutoring, building a website, doing administrative work, and creating math-related social media content. In 2023, I created custom math programming for schools, wrote and published a math-based children’s book, and hired a Director of Operations and a team of five tutors. In 2024, I focused on growing our tutoring business and making math more accessible for learners of all ages (and especially girls) through programming for schools, presentations for educators, and social media. It’s been a very rewarding journey and I’m excited to see where my path takes me next!

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

While Math Refresh is thriving now and my business feels very aligned with my life’s greater purpose, it was a journey to find where I belong in this world as a STEM-talented, Kate-Spade-wearing, millennial woman.

Over the course of my education and career thus far, I have often felt out of place showing up as the most authentic version of myself, feeling the burden of the patriarchy that tells women to dull themselves to fit in. When I was in my college business calculus course, I was one of four girls in a 35 student class, where the boys scoffed at my pink pencils and paisley print folders. When I participated in professional development as a teacher, I longed for other women in the audience who I could both relate to about loving math jokes, Taylor Swift, and how our mascara wand is a real-world representation of a logarithmic spiral. Instead, I exchanged pleasantries with the few older women in the room if anyone spoke to each other at all. I often felt like “Alice in Wonderland,” too big or too small for the spaces applicable to math.

While I began Math Refresh as a young teacher who could be relevant to students through pop culture and social media, my mission has expanded beyond education to a cultural movement. I realized how much of my life I spent looking for my place in this world, rooms where I could show up as my authentic self, but always coming up short. In the creation of Math Refresh, it awarded me an opportunity to create the space I longed for, where girls CAN like geometry just as much as they like wearing bows. (And we’ll absolutely talk about the fact that bows are good examples of parallel lines cut by transversals.)

I now serve as a leader for girls in STEM, exemplifying how what we look like doesn’t compromise the validity of our work. There’s space for girls in math. Wear pink while you solve quadratic equations. Use hearts for variables instead of “x.” It’s alive. It’s real. It’s beautiful. And being good at it is something to be proud of. Yeah, we’ll turn a few heads/raise a few eyebrows while we do it, but that just proves there’s more work to be done in the STEM-inist movement. Because what we look like and the validity of our work are not mutually exclusive events (yes, probability-pun intended.)

As you know, we’re big fans of Math Refresh Education Company. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?

Math Refresh is an education company redefining math to be fresh, real, fun, and maybe even cool! We work with private families and districts to solve their *math problems* through private tutoring, consulting, and programming. We set ourselves apart with our high standards for excellence and with our mission to make math accessible for all learners. We take a unique approach to math education, focused on bringing math to life and the relevance of mathematics in the real-world.

We are known for making math fun through our colorful branding, innovative social media content, and published children’s book “The Ultimate A-Z Math Scavenger Hunt.” We find new ways to show that mathematical principles and reasoning has a place in everyone’s life.

We set ourselves apart in private tutoring by working exclusively with New York State Certified Teachers as our tutors to maintain our high standards for student learning. Our tutors undergo a rigorous application process and have proven to be highly effective in their teaching methodology. We employ a student-centered learning environment, where sessions are customized to the individual needs of the student and students have space to ask questions, safely learn from mistakes, and build confidence alongside an experienced tutor.

We are most proud of the impact we have made in math education through our teaching methodology. By introducing advanced math concepts early on, through real-world examples, and in low-stakes environments, we destigmatize math and help to reduce math anxiety overall. We developed programming for schools to integrate these practices and were a featured speaker at the Association of Mathematics Teachers of New York State Annual Conference this year on the topic.

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?

I believe the key to successful networking is adapting the perspective of networking to add value to the room, rather than what you can gain from it. Each person in the room has a unique perspective, an inspiring story, or some wisdom to share. When we create spaces to share and learn from each other, the most meaningful connections are made. Find what lights people up to talk about by asking questions, actively listening, and finding common ground. Consider using ratios (yes, math even holds space in networking events) in the conversation: each person should have equal time speaking, with no one person dominating the conversation.

Finding a mentor happens over time in the spaces you consistently show up in as the most-authentic version of yourself. As you feel confident and charismatic, you naturally attract people with similar vibes. You share similar goals, but may be at different points in the journey and can offer advice or a listening ear along the way. For me, I like finding other women who are breaking the glass ceiling in their industry and showing up as their colorful-selves. I’m inspired by their grit and fortitude to pave a new path and dare to dream outside the box.

So go, dare to take up space in rooms you feel too small for. Remain curious and open to new opportunities. And hold yourself with confidence that you are highly-valued simply by virtue of your human experience.

Pricing:

• Tutoring starting at $65
• $11.79 per copy of “The Ultimate A-Z Math Scavenger Hunt”
• Consulting starting at $85

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.math-refresh.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/math.refresh
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mathrefreshtutoring
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@math-refresh