After graduating from Davidson Caroline thought she was going to be a lawyer or a doctor because that’s what everyone else was doing. She ended up hating it and actually applied to teach English in South Korea. After teaching for a year, Caroline traveled around South Asia for a couple of years, until feeling like she was more a tourist in the cities she was in, and wanted more of a community and solid base.
After coming back stateside, Caroline ended up in West Virginia, met her husband, and started working as a receptionist which transitioned into helping found a company. This was Caroline’s first foray into start-ups and starting companies. After enjoying that, Caroline looked into business school to learn more and moved out to Oregon where her husband did his residency and she completed her MBA at Portland State University. During that time, Caroline met the founder of Rogue and reached back out about to learn as much about investing as possible, when she was actually offered a job with Rogue.
Like many at Davidson, Caroline was a scholar-athlete and that teamwork plays into her work today. Developing a discipline and skill-set that scholar-athletes need in order to thrive at Davidson, allowed Caroline to transition easily into the working world. Not only that, but recognizing that you may fulfill a specific skill set of a larger team, makes you a real team player, instead of just focused on yourself.
After joining Rogue, Caroline started to focus on supporting women’s ventures through Rogue and she started to put together a thesis about why investing in women-led ventures again and again gave great returns. There were a lot of professional reasons to start something like this at Rogue, but Caroline’s own daughter added a personal touch to raising this kind of fund and continuing to do this kind of work.
