Meet Jennifer Barrett
Author, Executive and Financial Expert
Hi, I'm Jennifer. I'm the author of the book, Think Like a Breadwinner: A Wealth-Building Manifesto for Women Who Want to Earn More (and Worry Less), which was inspired by my own wake-up call and journey to financial freedom and by my desire to help empower other women financially and professionally to create the lives they want. The book is packed with tools, stories and insights to help expand the way you think about your financial capabilities and the possibilities for your life, and to recognize and overcome the internal and external barriers that can get in the way of that. It's specifically designed to help move us beyond just covering the bills and saving a little for retirement to truly taking care of ourselves and our future—and having fun fulfilling our desires.
I'm also the Head of Content at Fidelity Investments. Before joining Fidelity in the summer of 2021, I was Chief Education Officer at Acorns, a saving and investing app with more than 10 million users. Over my career, I have held a range of management roles, including: Personal Finance Editor at CNBC Digital, General Manager at Hearst Digital, and SVP and Editor in Chief at DailyWorth, a financial media company targeting women. A contributor to Forbes, I've also written about money for publications like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Newsweek, where I was a writer and editor. I co-authored two other personal finance books and I speak and write about the topic a lot on podcasts, panels, TV and in the press. I also advise three early-stage, female-led startups and provide leadership coaching to female founders. A proud breadwinner, I live in Brooklyn with my husband and two sons.
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I started my career in financial journalism covering foreign exchange for The Wall Street Journal. Then I moved to TheStreet.com and The New York Times, before joining Newsweek as a staff writer and editor for seven years, focused on health and personal finance. I’ve continued to write about money for a range publications, from The Washington Post to Forbes, where I’m a regular contributor. I moved into management in 2009, but in my heart, I'm still a journalist. My greatest joy comes from helping to educate and inspire people to make informed choices that will improve their quality of life. That's what got me into journalism and what drives me to continue educating, writing and speaking on topics like financial wellness today.
As a digital director at NBC Universal and Hearst and, later, the General Manager of four women’s magazine sites—Cosmopolitan, Seventeen, Redbook and Good Housekeeping—I moved into overseeing content and digital strategy, focusing on how to reach and engage a wide and evolving female audience. My passion for helping to empower women financially led me to my next role as SVP and Editor-in-Chief at DailyWorth, a financial media company for women. And then to CNBC Digital, where I was the Personal Finance Editor, and to Acorns, where, by the time I left, nearly 40 percent of the users we served were women (and growing!). Part of my roles has been doing outreach to women to help them grow their knowledge, confidence—and money! I’ve been honored to meet some of them while speaking at conferences like TEDx, Social Media Week, Fearless in Fintech and the Aha Women's Speaker Series.
I’ve learned a lot in my past dozen years in management, four of them at the executive level at Acorns, about what it means to lead and what it takes to scale an idea and a business. I’ve also experienced personally the additional challenges, and loneliness, that female leaders can face. And in my book, I share some of my learnings and experiences, and how I found a community of other breadwinner-minded women who uplift and inspire me every day—and how you can, too.
As Featured In...
THINK LIKE A BREADWINNER
A Wealth-Building Manifesto for Women Who Want to Earn More (and Worry Less)
By Jennifer Barrett
Nearly half of working women in the U.S. are their household’s main breadwinner. Yet most women still aren’t being brought up to think like breadwinners. In fact, we're discouraged–by institutional bias and cultural conditioning–from building our own wealth, pursuing our full earning potential, and providing for ourselves and others financially. The result is that women overall earn less, owe more, and have significantly less money saved and invested for the future than men do. And if we do end up the main breadwinner, we often feel reluctant and unprepared to manage the role.
In Think Like a Breadwinner, financial expert Jennifer Barrett reframes what it means to be a breadwinner. By dismantling the narrative that women don’t—and shouldn’t—take financial responsibility to create the lives they want, she reveals not just the importance of women building their own wealth but the freedom and power that comes with it, whether we end up the main earner in a relationship or not. With practical tools, and insights from her own journey, Jennifer encourages women to embrace, and rejoice in, breadwinning like never before.
