Jessica Raasch
T-Mobile, Leadership 2 Executive Program
Edie Hunt Inspiration Award Winner

Receiving a Fort? Fellowship was Jessica Raasch’s first introduction to Fort?, and it ignited her passion for gender equality. She led her MBA program’s Graduate Women in Business group and was Fort?’s 2018 Edie Hunt Award winner.

Growing up, Jessica Raasch thought she wanted to be a lawyer. After graduating from Arizona State with an economics degree, she worked at a law firm as a financial consultant with plans to specialize in mergers and acquisitions one day. But encountering clients who had built companies from scratch piqued Jessica’s interest in pursuing a business career instead.

Finding her purpose through Fort?

Jessica “fell in love” with Fort?’s mission after receiving a Fort? Fellowship and attending Fort?’s MBA Women’s Leadership Conference. Being a Fellow shaped her entire graduate school experience: she saw for the first time that gender was a business issue; she met the woman who would become her best friend at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business while at the conference; and she helped create a community of Fellows at Foster. “As part of the first class of Fellows at Foster, we decided to meet regularly because we wanted to make it meaningful, and we wanted Foster to leverage Fort?,” she says.