How I Reimagined the Workplace—And the Workforce

Stephanie Nadi Olson started her meteoric ad-sales career when Microsoft recruited her straight out of Georgia Tech as its youngest account manager. By the age of 28, she'd claimed an executive's chair in Silicon Valley. Amid the always-on stress of her job, she started a family, and that's when she came to see how the very structure of the traditional workplace is sidelining millions of talented people.

- By Christine Lagorio-Chafkin

WE ARE ROSIE CEO: STEPHANIE NADI OLSON

CATEGORY: HUMAN RESOURCES

THREE-YEAR REVENUE GROWTH: 2,267%

So she set out to address the problem by building a new sort of staffing platform. The demand was there: Temp agencies are a $196 billion business in the U.S., and Olson's Rolodex was full of advertising and marketing execs who needed teams for events, campaigns, and social media initiatives at the likes of Twitter and Hulu. In 2018, with $10,000 of her own money, she built an entirely virtual platform, with flexibility at its core, to help independent marketers find work. In 2021, Atlanta-based We Are Rosie raised private equity funding that valued the company at $110 million. To get there, Olson would have to live through a personal health crisis. -AS TOLD TO CHRISTINE LAGORIO-CHAFKIN