Jackie Hermes is the CEO of Accelity, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based business that helps B2B software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies grow faster. Accelity has been growing quickly and has built out a new office in summer of 2019!

Jackie is super involved around the city as an organizer for Startup Milwaukee’s EMERGE events, a marketing partner of Milwaukee Startup Week, a member of the Golden Angels Investors Advisor team, and a coach and advisor at The Commons. Finally, she informally mentors a number of startups and love working with early-stage companies.

Jackie started her entrepreneurial journey with cookies. Really. A vegan cookie company… and she wasn’t vegan. She turned four cookie recipes into a business—designing packaging, finding a kitchen and making the cookies, eventually outsourcing production, then selling and establishing distribution to 12 grocery stores around Wisconsin.

The cookies taught Jackie how to hustle. As a 24-year-old MBA, she definitely didn’t picture herself hoisting up tents at farmers markets to hand out $5 bags of cookies, or being the demo lady at the grocery store, but there she was. She still had a full-time job (running the marketing department at a SaaS company), and a baby.

Jackie has been so grateful for that experience because the money she made helped her start Accelity. What began as a one-woman consultancy blossomed into a kick-ass team of 14 and counting with a new office underway and a group of amazing, loyal clients in 8 states around the US.

LinkedIn has been a huge contributor to her growth over the past year. Jackie got talked into publishing videos about her entrepreneurial experiences in mid-2018 and have steadily grown an audience of nearly 30,000 followers. The LinkedIn community has given her so much love and support and she could not possibly be more grateful for the opportunities LinkedIn has given her over the last year.

Outside her professional life, Jackie was a foster parent for two years and adopted one of her beautiful children from foster care in Milwaukee. People always ask about hobbies and to be honest, she doesn’t have many, but they include: working toward her pilot’s license, barre classes, exploring downtown Milwaukee and playing a whole lot of Star Wars Trouble with her kids.

Learn more about Jackie Hermes by visiting her website jackiehermes.com. Connect with her via LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/thejackiehermes/ or Instagram @thejackiehermes. Send her an email at jackie@accelitymarketing.com.