Alumni Profile: Jennifer Lovitt Riggs of Nota Bene Shoes for Women
Today: President and founder of Nota Bene shoes for women, a business that creates and markets beautiful shoes that active professional women can wear all day. After leaving Booz Allen in 2002, Jennifer spent two years preparing her business: from analyzing the biomechanics of the foot and the women's shoe market, to developing supplier relationships, and testing prototypes. During the initial phase of her venture, Jennifer surveyed 50 women, including former colleagues at Booz Allen; an enthusiastic pass-along rate garnered 300 responses. Encouraged by this feedback, Jennifer started production in 2004. Today, Nota Bene shoes are sold in 20 to 25 stores across the country, from New York, Atlanta, and Orlando to Chicago and San Francisco.
Jennifer Lovitt Riggs
At Booz Allen & Before: Jennifer was with Booz Allen from 1996 to 2002 in the McLean office as a member of what was then the National Security Team. During her six years at the firm, she worked with several federal agencies, mainly on policy and strategic planning issues. While still a graduate student, she was recruited by the CIA, where she worked as a fellow. Jennifer joined Booz Allen right after receiving her M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy. She received her B.A. from Wellesley.
Did your experience at Booz Allen give you a strong foundation for your current position? Absolutely. I spent much of my time working with a geospatial imagery agency to identify the big problems that it needed to address in the intelligence community and how its current and planned resources matched up against its future needs. What I was doing back then is similar to what I'm doing now: identifying and articulating needs to facilitate their resolution.
The inspiration for Nota Bene actually came to me while I was with Booz Allen. On my way to give a briefing at the Pentagon, I crossed its huge parking lot and got a blister. I thought, "Why are all the women around me walking into the Pentagon in sneakers? Why can't women find shoes they can wear when they need to be dressed and comfortable? My male colleagues don't waste time thinking about whether their dress shoes are trustworthy for the day's activities." This was the genesis of Nota Bene shoes for women, and Booz Allen women were some of my first customers.
Booz Allen is really great at training you to sharpen and apply skills: market analysis, strategic planning, project management, managing resources, and to my surprise, even sales and marketing. I was able to refine and hone all these skills in my work with clients. My experience helped me realize, not only was I good at identifying and analyzing problems, but I was good at resolving them too!
So Booz Allen really gave me a strong foundation for launching my own venture. On a day-to-day tactical level, I was helping clients accomplish their goals, but in a larger sense I was leveraging the resources of the firm to build a client service business practice within the firm. So, in many ways Booz Allen was an incubator for me as an entrepreneur because I learned how to build and grow a business.
What skills did you acquire at Booz Allen? In terms of new skills, I would have to say team development. One way to describe what Booz Allen does is that it identifies and applies the right talent in the right place in the right quantity: it builds teams to achieve specific goals. I learned to identify what skill sets we needed for a project, what personality types would work best for clients, and how to satisfy the personnel career growth needs of the team members, all the while keeping everyone happy and motivated.
But the greatest benefit I received from Booz Allen was the opportunity to practice and apply a broad range of nascent skill sets. For example, analysis and communication: it's one thing to write a thesis or develop a model, and it's another to help an agency launch a program that must rest on a foundation of solid thought work and then bear daily scrutiny in a changing, challenging environment. Booz Allen provided so many opportunities to conduct solid thought work and then translate it into valuable results.
Strategic planning was another tool I strengthened at Booz Allen: articulating the big picture, and then breaking it down, ultimately into actionable tactical steps that we could assign and measure. Managing projects was another skill I sharpened through consulting: continuous reassessment of the goal/deliverables, the timeline, the resources, what was working, what was not — so that we could adjust our course and deliver what the client needed. Budgeting and resource management were also important tools I refined at Booz Allen. In terms of resources, this could also mean thinking broadly about issues like, what political collateral we had and how we could manage it to accomplish clients' goals.
Booz Allen was a wonderful training ground. When I left and started Nota Bene shoes for women, I thought my big gap would be in sales and marketing. Then I realized that all the proposal work I did, all the client relationship building, team management, and motivating people — it was the heart and soul of sales and marketing.
Would you recommend working at Booz Allen? Absolutely. The caliber of Booz Allen's colleagues is high. You learn from your peers as well as from senior staff and are given opportunities every day to practice what you've learned. There are always chances to grow, to challenge yourself. The application of skills really solidifies them. Once you see how valuable they are, it increases your confidence, which improves your performance.
Consulting work is wonderful for a curious and active mind: you keep changing gears. You also have to learn quickly and efficiently in order to be a good steward of your client's resources. You just get better and better at the process of going up the learning curve and becoming an expert. You've learned how to learn.
Any favorite moments or experiences at Booz Allen? What was great about Booz Allen on a day-to-day level was the camaraderie and professionalism that our team enjoyed. The team appreciated and responded to hard work and talent. For people who want to thrive and always give their best, it's important to feel recognized, supported and promoted. The fact that Booz Allen can sustain professional camaraderie over time and across more than 5,000 employees clearly demonstrates good management and leadership decisions.
I looked forward every day to working with my colleagues. It was a very healthy environment in terms of people genuinely being oriented towards the same positive goals. One of the most memorable experiences for me was being able to promote staff and reward them commensurate with their performance. It was a powerful experience to reward people for excellent performance.
Any advice for people starting their consulting career? At whatever level you're working, it's definitely helpful to identify clearly what the goals you want to achieve, both the stated and unspoken ones. It's also very helpful to find mentors. My Booz Allen connections still feel strong and I've certainly sought the advice of my Booz Allen mentors in launching my business. Natural curiosity and an interest in problem solving are very good qualities to have at Booz Allen. If you are self starting and self motivated, it's an amazing place to grow and thrive.
profile posted May 17, 2005