"Allow myself to introduce...myself"
**Bonus points if you know the film that headline is from.**
“Who is Jenny Weigle? What does she know about community strategy? Did she really audition for The Voice?” All are valid questions. All will be answered soon…very soon.
I hail from the great city of Temple Terrace, just outside of Tampa, Florida. Growing up in the Sunshine State has its perks: theme parks galore, phenomenal year-round weather, regular trips to the beach, and getting to walk outside with your elementary school classmates to see the space shuttles’ trail of smoke high in the sky with each launch. It didn’t hurt that I also had two parents who were social butterflies. We were always attending community events and were encouraged to get involved. Also, since my parents both came from large families, our house was always hosting a gathering of some sort for someone’s birthday, anniversary, graduation, or celebration.
There were always people at our house, and there was always an event taking place. So it’s no wonder why I fell in love with gatherings and feeling a sense of community! In fact, at age 9 I created my very first community. I wittingly called it The Cool Kids Club, and you could only join it if you were a cool kid that lived in the neighborhood (and every kid in our neighborhood was cool). I’d gather the group up each week to go exploring in the woods behind our house, build ramps for jumping our bikes, and play various outdoor games together. Looking back on it now, we didn’t need a formal name for our group. I suppose I just wanted something to unite us, something that was different than just calling us “the neighborhood kids” since that could apply anywhere. It was the beginning of a life of building and joining communities, a life that would eventually turn into my career.
By the time the time I got to high school, I realized something about myself: I was a compulsive joiner. I wanted to be part of as many school and church clubs as possible. Not only that, but I wanted to hold a leadership role in most of them, too. What can I say? I extraverted, hard. This starting impacting decisions about my future, too. I can recall sitting at our kitchen table with college applications printed out covering half of it. I was filling out one of them and a question stumped me: What is your intended major/course of study? Naturally, I asked my mother her opinion on this. She asked me, “Well dear, what do you think you’re good at?” My response was, “Building communities and making connections.” She said, “Hm. Maybe you could major in Sales, then?”
Having NOT declared Sales as a major, I instead chose Public Relations and attended the University of Florida. I continued my compulsive joiner streak there as well as back in Tampa, when I moved after graduation. I was proud to be a founding member of Emerge Tampa (today, it’s called Emerging Leaders) and The Ekhos. It was hard to part with those communities, but life took me to Chicago to continue my career and get a taste of that big city living!
It was in Chicago that I held my first-ever official community role with a company: I was hired on as the very first Social Media & Community Manager for CareerBuilder. The role opened up an entire new world to me. I got involved with various community-management organizations, started speaking at conferences, and became the local host for The Community Roundtable’s #TheCRLiveCHI meetup series. I can honestly say that I came into work each day excited and fulfilled by this career path! (Hey Mom, you really CAN make a career out of building community!)
Fast forward to today: My career progressed as I worked for Salesforce and Khoros, each one increasing my love for community. Now, living in Los Angeles, I’m fortunate to have fostered an incredible community, many of whom I met when I founded Spiritual Sisters of Los Angeles. I begin my next endeavor with the launch of my consulting practice, in the hopes of training a new generation of Community Strategists. For fun, I still love going to theme parks and the beach! And given that I’ve got two years of singing lessons under my belt, maybe I’ll one day audition for The Voice. Who knows? Until then, I’m going to keep building communities.