Jewel Burks
Partpic Inc.
Atlanta, GA USA
"Don’t be frustrated with curves in the road...Try to find the glimmer of goodness in the bad turns."
Career Roadmap
Jewel's work combines: Engineering, Science, and Problem Solving
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Day In The Life
Skills &
Education
Advice for getting started
When I first moved to Silicon Valley, it was a culture shock. There weren't very many people that looked like me and I struggled with feeling like I didn't belong. I constantly second guessed myself. I had to realize that I even though I'm different, I'm capable and here for a reason.
Here's the path I took:
High School
Bachelor's Degree
Marketing/Marketing Management, General
Howard University
Life & Career Milestones
My path in life took a while to figure out
1.
Attended Howard University; while she was there, she connected with an on-campus recruiter from Google.
2.
Moved to Silicon Valley after college and realized that there was a whole “world” of tech-loving, entrepreneurial people like her, living in one place.
3.
She was employed at Google for several years before deciding to leave to take a job in parts distribution.
4.
Right when she started her new job, she realized she’d made a huge mistake—she freaked out and wondered why she’d left Google.
5.
Decided that instead of giving into regret, she’d look at this new job from a Silicon Valley perspective: she’d use the job an opportunity to find a new idea and innovate the business.
6.
She was working in the call center when she realized that people were struggling to describe the part that they needed—they wanted to take a picture of the part and send it to her.
7.
Inspired by Shazam—the app that can “listen” to music and tell you which song is playing—she decided to build a visual search tool to match these pictures of parts to their distributors.
8.
She gathered a team of engineers by networking and hanging out at nearby Georgia Tech; she eventually connected with her co-founder and together they started Partpic.
Defining Moments
How I responded to discouragement
THE NOISE
Messages from Myself:
How did I get here? WHY am I here?
How I responded:
When I first moved to Silicon Valley, it was a culture shock. There weren't very many people that looked like me and I struggled with feeling like I didn't belong. I constantly second guessed myself. I had to realize that I even though I'm different, I'm capable and here for a reason.
Experiences and challenges that shaped me
I've been told people would rather work with someone else because they weren't used to working with a woman or some questions get directed to other team members instead of to me. People just don't expect to see a person like me as a startup founder.