Gumballs, Leadership, and an Unintentional Path to Executive Coaching
It all started with a quarter and a handful of gumballs. Angela Justice was just a child in a small rural town in Minnesota when she first tasted the sweet tang of entrepreneurship. With a keen eye for seeing opportunities others might miss, Angela turned her quarter into 25 gumballs and flipped them for a profit in her school lunch line, soon assembling a team of classmates to do the selling for her. Principal intervention aside, that experience planted a seed.
Angela had no exposure to business owners growing up, setting her apart from many who first catch the entrepreneurial bug through family. As the first in her family to complete college, Angela’s journey into academia seemed like blazing a new path, not a detour. Yet, she continued planting business seeds in unexpected places, opening her own dance studio at just 17, which supported her through her early college years.
While studying biocsychology in college and beyond, Angela envisioned a life dedicated to academia. But the allure of large, scalable impacts-those that go beyond the confines of a research lab, pulled her away. Management consulting became her new playground after her PhD, where Angela wielded her scientific thinking to influence business change. She may have been one of McKinsey’s least traditionally prepared hires, but her way of thinking soon became her strength.
Her pivot into biotech was equally unexpected. From consulting, she moved into the nonprofit realm and then found herself drawn into the biotech industry's embrace. Her initial role bridged corporate and scientific communities, but her hunger to understand and innovate led her to an executive position in HR and training at Biogen, transforming learning into a competitive advantage.
Yet, despite thriving in corporate environments, the entrepreneurial spirit persisted. Angela planned to carve her path by the age of 50, yet the transition was guided less by strict timelines and more by powerful mentors and natural opportunities. A supportive CEO at the cusp of a strategic exit nudged Angela to test the coaching waters, initially a side project. Mentored by executives who believed in her potential, she dipped her toes into entrepreneurship while still embedded within corporate structure.
The coaching fires were lit when a CEO reached out, needing Angela’s touch to evaluate and uplift a potential team leader. The success of that engagement solidified her decision to venture solo, full-scale. Within months, Angela was committed.
Now, two years into building her executive coaching practice, the seeds sown in her childhood and academic research have grown into a thriving consultancy. Her clientele consists mainly of VP-level and above executives in biotech, individuals whose technical genius sometimes blinds them to the broader business tapestry. Angela teaches them to zoom out, understanding the intricate dance of departments and how their roles ripple through the company fabric.
Angela has ventured into scalable solutions, spotlighting a novel initiative that fosters leadership conversations, blending behavioral science with practical application to create functional middle-management teams, the unsung heroes of organizational success.
Angela reminds us that while starting a business might feel like a jump, there’s always a paddle in the water, an opening to test new waters before committing wholly. For Angela Justice, each step, from academic aspirations to corporate ascension and now as a guiding force for others, shows a deeply rooted understanding of people as her true business.
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