Jennifer Goss has been a multitasker since childhood. Her ability to navigate a complex list of chores has been even more helpful than usual as she steers the Junior League of Little Rock through a global pandemic.
In the past few weeks, as president of the Junior League, Goss has led the organization in moving meetings online, holding a board vote that would send home League staff and close the building, and waiving membership requirements -- including dues -- for the next few months.
She has also overseen the creation of an emergency community grant program to address the immediate needs of women and children in the community, even as Junior League members can't be as mobile as they might typically be.
"It fits within our mission of helping women and children, and it's for people -- nonprofit organizations who are on the front lines -- helping during this crisis," Goss says. "We're trying to find ways to be nimble as an organization and to help supply funding to them to help them do this job in this time."
At the same time, Goss is busy in her job as finance director of UA Little Rock Public Radio, working to ensure that that organization operates as efficiently as possible during a time of financial uncertainty.
"We're supposed to have a fundraiser in two weeks and that's not going to happen anymore," Goss says. "We're having conversations about what is the minimum we need for it to be a successful year. We're really being creative on the financial side."
She's handling it in stride.
"Even when she was very young, she was a multitasker," says her mother, Donna Goss. "At the time I didn't categorize it as multitasker, I kind of thought it was just her not being focused. But really, it was her just being able to handle a lot of stuff up in the air at the same time."
MATH GEEK
Jennifer Goss grew up in Little Rock, the second child of Donna and Jim Goss, both of whom work in the insurance industry.
"I'm kind of a math geek," Goss says. "I always loved doing math problems, even after school. I didn't know I wanted to be an accountant. I really never knew how I could apply my aptitude for math to a career, and what's great about accounting is it's not just math, it's the application of math. It's having those creative discussions from a business perspective of how do we cut expenses down? Where can we save money and what are policies for state and any federal policies we have and understanding those. You don't necessarily think of the legal side of accounting, but I've learned a lot about legal sides of businesses because most of us as accountants have to follow those as well."
She wasn't sure what she wanted to do when she started college at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, but when her older sister, Melissa Lau, began studying accounting she thought it sounded like a good fit for her, too.
She completed her undergraduate degree in accounting and went on to get a master's degree in business management. Her first job out of college was as an accounting assistant at the Capital Hotel.
Two years later she started a new job as an accountant at Stephens Investment Holdings, managing the accounting for Halifax Media newspaper chain as well as with Stephens Media.
She joined UA Little Rock Public Radio in 2017.
"When I started here we were negative $200,000 net position, and this last year -- we just had our financials come out -- our net was about $330,000 positive position," she says. "So in three years, I've been able to really work with the staff to develop our better development plans and cut expenses and really get creative on how we have those conversations of what is necessary and what's not."
Her strategy has evolved as finances improved since she started in the position.
"When I first started, the model was get every price reduced, to cut everything down, and then start to grow on it, and so that's what we did," she says. "Every year, we've just been able to kind of build a little bit."
Her model has resulted in physical changes as well as intangible ones in the radio station.
"We're starting to make improvements in our facility," she says. "We've been able to really improve our facilities, improve our product that we're giving out to the community, which is so important here."
She applied for the job because she developed a love of nonprofit work through her work with the Junior League.
"I love working for nonprofits and I love being tied to a mission, of providing a service to the community that's so needed and desired and so that's what got me kind of in the door here," she says.
RADIO STAR
Nathan Vandiver, general manager for UA Little Rock Public Radio, remembers when her application came across his desk.
"When Jennifer came on we were in a period of significant transition. Our general manager of 22 years had passed away, and I had stepped in as interim general manager. And we had lost so much in institutional knowledge at that time, and we really needed to get more help with our financial practices and procedures and that kind of thing," Vandiver says. "I really am so glad that Jennifer answered our job posting because she's been able to help us so significantly and really help us turn things around in terms of getting our finances in order, just making sure everything is done properly."
He sees her work with the Junior League as complementary to her work in public radio.
"Jennifer is a leader. She has an incredible drive to serve. I think that that's evident through the Junior League but also here at the radio station. We're a noncommercial, educational licensee in a public service department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock so we're providing programming that's not otherwise commercially viable for the region, like classical music programming and then NPR news and information and general educational programming. I think you can definitely see her drive to serve in working in a place like this."
Goss joined the Junior League when she was 23, the minimum age for membership, when she moved back to Little Rock after college. She had volunteered with Central Arkansas Rescue Effort for Animals and for Centers for Youth and Families and she enjoyed both, but she hadn't yet found a place to "plug in."
"A lot of women I knew were involved and they really talked it up and said how amazing it was, and I said, 'OK, I'll just try it and see if it's a fit.' I have a tendency to be either 100% in or 100% out and so I got 100% into it," she says. "I never expected to do really any leadership. My intention was just to serve, and I wanted just to be in a committee position and just serve and be able to participate in our literacy initiative, where we get to read to children and share with them the love of reading."
Goss quickly became invested in Junior League, finding mentors and opportunities along the way. She was asked to serve as a business manager on the League's Stuff the Bus project, one of the organization's biggest charitable events that provides school supplies for 3,000 students each year. Then she served as business manager of the Downtown Dash.
"I still remember all of these amazing women who would come and talk to me about my leadership journey and what was that next step going to be. They really encouraged me along the way -- which is what is so unique about this organization -- to be in a space with all women," she says. "We don't have all women for the sake of not having men. We do it for us, for the opportunity for women to have a 'safe place to fail' is what we like to call it. So it gives them that safe environment, that encouraging environment, to learn how to do some things they maybe never knew how to do."
THE MAKING OF A PRESIDENT
Goss learned management skills as she oversaw projects and led committees as well as marketing and promoting the League through social media.
"I would have not learned that skill anywhere else. There are so many opportunities that you get to plug into in this field of being involved with this nonprofit. I probably would have never gotten this job with public radio without the skills I learned through them. I had management skills that I got through a nonprofit, through my unpaid job, that I didn't get through my paid job. So it really does make a difference in who I am 10 years later."
Former League president Marisha DiCarlo recalls that during 2017-18, Goss was placed on the financial planning committee development task force, the governance and management task force; admissions and new member training; and the chairwoman of Little Readers Rock, providing books and reading materials to children in Little Rock.
"That was the year that she was asked to take on new roles and in some cases it was because other people had different commitments and couldn't fulfill their commitments and so she stepped in. ... She was grateful and happy," says DiCarlo, who worried that maybe Goss would feel overwhelmed. "I remember at one point asking her, 'Are you sure?'"
That wasn't the only time Goss has stepped up to take on extra tasks. DiCarlo teaches a class in crisis communications at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and she asked Goss if her students could tour KUAR.
"This is in the middle of having a full-time job and there was never a hesitation," DiCarlo says. "She was enthusiastic about the learning experience and helpful and happy to share what she and her team members do at the radio station."
Then there was the time Goss showed up with a coffee maker. She was treasurer-elect then and DiCarlo was president and it was the weekend of Holiday House.
"I was kind of checking on everyone and trying to make sure that we were all ready to get started and Jennifer arrived with a Keurig to set up in the back because she knew how much I love coffee," DiCarlo says. "She said, 'I thought it would just be a little better for us if we just had a variety of options to help us keep going. I just brought it from home.' So nice, just above and beyond."
The League is a training organization, preparing women to lead various initiatives and challenges through service to the community, Goss says, but it was the mentors who convinced her to seek the presidency.
"I never expected to be president, never had that intention. In my mind -- and I wouldn't have done it without that encouragement that I received along the way -- that I was a good leader, that I was doing a great job, and that there's always room for improvement," she says. "I always tell people that whenever you're offered a position, it's not because you're perfect in that position. It's because you have the opportunity to be perfect in that position."
FAMILY COMES FIRST
When she needs more encouragement she turns to her family.
"I had such strong women in my life growing up and I think that has helped me to know my worth and know what I'm capable of," she says.
There was her great-grandmother, Bernice Highley, who picked her up from elementary school in the afternoons and taught her to bake and enjoy The Young and the Restless.
"Now I'm the baker of the family," she says. "I love to bake when I can and to stand over the stove and make different stuff. One thing I have not mastered of hers is the strawberry preserves, but one day when I have the time I will try to master it."
Goss used to turn Highley's opal birthstone ring around on her finger and tell her how pretty it was. When she turned 18, Highley gave it to her. She wears it every day.
There was also her grandmother, Wanda Young, who died in January. They shared a love of sweets and talked about what was in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that day and about the Dallas Cowboys and the Arkansas Razorbacks.
Goss says she's the caretaker of the family, always making sure people have what they need, and that she gets her sass from her mother and her even temper from her father.
She enjoys spending time with her niece and nephew, Adyson, 11, and Liam, 6, with whom she has regular "date nights" and lets them pick the activity or destination for the evening.
"We are a very close-knit family," she says.
They are the people she turns to when things don't go the way she might have hoped, and she wishes all women felt the same level of support from their families.
"When you are dealing with really big situations you just have to go back to what your family has said and how supportive they have been of you your entire life," Goss says. "I hope that even if women have not had that support system their entire life, that they're feeling that in this organization, the Junior League, that we are supporting them, that we are getting them through it, even if they don't have that external support that exists outside of the League."
SELF PORTRAIT
Jennifer Goss
• DATE, PLACE OF BIRTH: July 8, 1986, Little Rock
• A BOOK I RECENTLY READ AND LIKED: Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
• THE BEST ADVICE I EVER GOT WAS: From past Junior League president Marisha DiCarlo who said, "You're not going to be able to get everything done, and so some weeks you're going to have to let stuff go. But the next week, you can't let that same thing go."
• MY MOST PRECIOUS CHILDHOOD MEMORY: The 4 p.m. dinners I had with my great grandmother when I was little.
• I WISH I COULD: Give girls a chance to be equal from the beginning -- all girls. I want to give them a chance to succeed in anything they want to succeed in.
• I LIKE TO EAT: Anything sweet.
• I WISH: People would know what Junior League of Little Rock does and what we do good for the community.
• THE FIVE PEOPLE I WOULD LIKE TO CHAT WITH OVER A SLICE OF PIE: My grandmother, Wanda Young; my great-grandmother, Bernice Highley; my great-grandfather Bob Young; and my niece and nephew so they could meet my great-grandfather.
• SOMETHING FEW PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT ME: I'm a handywoman. I do a lot of things around my house.
• IN THE MORNING: I like to eat my cereal -- and I eat like a kid, so it's Frosted Flakes or whatever is in my pantry -- and plan out my day.
• ONE WORD TO SUM ME UP: Selfless
High Profile on 04/05/2020