Meet Jacqui Chew | Convenor, Creative Problem-solver & Narrative Architect

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jacqui Chew and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jacqui, where are your from? We’d love to hear about how your background has played a role in who you are today?
I was born and raised in the island country of Singapore and moved to the United States to attend college. I grew up in a traditional Chinese household steeped in the largely patriarchal Confucian value system.

The concepts of respecting your elders regardless of circumstance, upward mobility through education and weighing one’s actions through the impact they would have on the collective are still deeply embedded in my DNA but my decades of professional and personal development here in the United States have also instilled an appreciation for more Western values such as individual self expression and self-determination.

The two things that have remained constant are my sense of curiosity and striving for excellence.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
As the managing director and CMO of iFusion Consulting, a fractional (interim) CMO consultancy to seed-to-series A startup, a founding member and former licensee of TEDxPeachtree, the state’s largest TEDx group and the licensee of TEDxAtlanta since 2018, I am active in the state’s innovation ecosystem with personal and professional interest in advancing technology and non-technology solutions to environmental and social equity challenges.

At our founding in 2006, iFusion was the very first consultancy to offer fractional CMO services to startups in the Southeast and possibly the country! At the time, fractional CFOs were all the rage and those consultancies were beginning to add fractional CTO and Chief Sales Officer services as well but none were offering comparable services in marketing strategy.

My experience as the first senior marketing hire at Silverpop (acquired by IBM) and as the VP of sales and marketing at a fintech startup CoreCard, which has been in business since 2001 and is still operating, made me keenly aware of the unique marketing needs of startups.

I am proud that iFusion has been able to provide early marketing support to companies like NanoLumens (its unique LED screens can be found in airports and retail malls across the globe), Preparis (acquired by Agility Recovery and has kept its brand name post-acquisition), MessageGears (raised $62M in December 2022) and KontroFreek (acquired in 2020 and its highly rated products are still sold under the KontroFreek brand).

While it difficult gaining traction in the early days, the faith that industry leaders like angel investor Sig Mosley and then ATDC entrepreneur-in-residence Lance Weatherby placed in me led to early clients. The positive outcomes led to more clients and iFusion took off from there.

Once iFusion gained momentum, the biggest hurdles became building a deep talent bench and nurturing a culture that could withstand the ebbs and flows of client demand.

I was fortunate in that I was able learn the people management aspects of the business from my role as licensee and leader of two of the largest TEDx affiliates in the state of Georgia. TEDx groups are comprised almost exclusively of volunteers from the community. TEDxPeachtree and TEDxAtlanta are no different.

Over the 14 years as an organizer and then license holder of TEDxPeachtree and now TEDxAtlanta, I learned important lessons in leadership.

1. Give first.
2. Be willing to do what you ask of others.
3. Leaders can be effective and have a sense of humor.
4. Be transparent even/especially if the news is bad.
5. Deliver negative feedback with kindness.
6. Being collaborative and decisive are not mutually exclusive.
7. It’s ok not to have all the answers.
8. Hope for the best, plan for the worst and execute decisions based on established risk thresholds.
9. Exercise the “donut of control”: We can’t control external factors or the behavior of others but we can control how we respond.
10. Lean into our common humanity especially with those we have a difference in opinion.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
This is literally the itinerary from a week-long visit by family from Singapore:

Day One – Traditional tourist destinations
1. A trip to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens for the orchids and the Chihuly glass sculptures.
2. Brunch/lunch at the Flying Biscuit for their famous shrimp + grits and biscuits.
3. An afternoon at the Georgia Aquarium and the Coca Cola museum.

Day Two – civil rights heritage
1. Breakfast at Carroll Street Cafe and a walk around the Cabbagetown+ Reynoldstown neighborhoods for local artist color.

2. Tour of Oakland Cemetery which counts Margaret Mitchell, Kenny Rogers, Maynard Jackson and Edwin P Ansley as its
more famous residents.

3. Lunch at Budhi Sushi nearby. The owner Budhi is originally from Indonesia and also spent time in Hawaii so we always have lots to chat about when I dine there.

4. Afternoon: a leisurely picnic at Piedmont Park before heading to the Margaret Mitchell House.

Day Three – civil rights heritage continued
1. A visit to the birth home of Martin Luther King, Jr and Ebenezer Baptist Church. Depending on timing, I would book us tickets to the Civil Rights Tour by Tom Houck who was Dr King’s driver during the Civil Rights Movement.

2. Lunch at Ponce City Market for a little people watching.

Day Four & Five
1. Breakfast at Chinatown Plaza for traditional congee and crullers before heading north to Dahlonega and “apple country”
Depending on the time of year, we would pick apples at B.J. Reece Orchards in Ellijay and stay overnight before exploring the vineyards in that area, OR stay at Montaluce Winery & Restaurant and use it as home base to explore Wolf Mountain, Frogtown, Kaya and Three Sisters.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
With no family ties in my adopted country of America, I attribute my success to the people who believe in me.

Jamie Hartnett (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-hartnett-3b9b167/) who hired me as freelance talent back in Hawaii and wrote me a letter of recommendation when I told her I was moving to Atlanta, a city where I knew no one!

Jennifer Bonnett who hired me as the CMO-in-Residence at ATDC, Georgia’s incubator where we built an entrepreneur program that received Groundbreaker recognition by Atlanta Magazine (https://www.atlantamagazine.com/groundbreakers-2018/advanced-technology-development-center/) and national prominence. (https://www.forbes.com/sites/tomgroenfeldt/2016/12/08/atlantas-tech-scene-is-growing-startups-in-incubators-universities-and-accelerators/?sh=5b7e29318e26)

The TEDx community of creators, changemakers and storytellers who inspire me to keep pushing the innovation envelope every day.

Website: https://www.jacquichew.com and https://www.tedxatlanta.com

Instagram: @tedxatlanta @ifusion.co

Linkedin: in/jacquichew /company/tedxatlanta

Twitter: @tedxatlanta

Facebook: /tedxatlanta

Youtube: /@tedxatlanta

Image Credits
Photos courtesy of TEDxAtlanta under CC BY-SA 2.0