Voices of leadership
Building Businesses That Put People First
Q&A with Jessica Rolph
A social entrepreneur at heart, Jessica Rolph has always been passionate about the intersection of business and social impact.
For nearly two decades, she has lived that conviction. Her journey began when she co‑founded Happy Family in 2005 — driven by a passion to provide children with organic, nutrient‑dense food. Led by vision and grit, she helped grow the brand into the leading organic baby food company in the US.
Her mission didn’t stop at nutrition. Watching her own children play, Jessica questioned whether toys were truly serving brain development. She teamed up with Rod Morris to bring her insight to life. Together, they launched Lovevery — a company rooted in developmental science, offering stage‑based play kits and expert‑guided content to empower parents and support early childhood development.
Today, as Lovevery’s co-founder and CEO, Jessica stands at the intersection of child health and social impact, translating researched play into tools that build children’s brains and parents’ confidence.
Jessica is a Fellow of the Henry Crown Fellowship Program, Class XVII and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. We caught up with her at the 2025 Resnick Aspen Action Forum to learn more about building a business centered on social good, how she’s personally sustained her leadership in times of uncertainty, and the value of changing your mind.
Answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Tell us a little bit about your leadership and impact journey and the challenge you’re trying to solve.
I would say it’s not necessarily a challenge, but the opportunity that I’ve been addressing in my career is this massive potential of human life, especially in the early years. From birth to age five, 90% of the human brain is developed by weight.
Scientists have debated this over the ages, but around half of who we become is our genetics, but the other half is our environment. And so there’s a huge opportunity that parents and families at home have to make a difference in their child’s future. Yet it’s also really hard to raise a child. I mean, babies don’t come with a guidebook. So, what we’re here to do at Lovevery, and with my first company Happy Family, is give parents the tools that they need to feel confident that they’re doing everything they can to help give their child a bright future.
What keeps you going in times of uncertainty?
I will admit that it has been a hard start to the year. The tariffs are a challenge for our business. We produce in a beautiful solar powered factory that is the number one producer of sustainably harvested wood toys in the world, and it is in China.
The thing that keeps me going is honestly one to one moments of connection with parents who’ve experienced Lovevery or who have a new life and are open to trying Lovevery. That might happen on a Reddit thread where I’m responding to a comment from a parent or a customer, or when I meet somebody in the airport and they see my backpack that says Lovevery on it and they come up to me and tell me how much Lovevery has meant to them and in their homes. It’s that one to one connection that keeps me going.
When was the last time you changed your mind?
So I’m finding that in times like this where there is so much pressure, there’s a lot of compression of decisions. I’m finding myself more open to data and more open to experimentation than ever before.
So the question of when was the last time I changed my mind? It was actually two days ago on something that I used to hold steadfast that now I’m wondering, could we open this up? Could we think differently about how we solve this problem of expanding our business and meeting customers where they need to be and not holding quite as dear to things that I believed were essential to running a business? For example, our subscription model or the way that we sell our products.
If you were to write a letter to your younger self, what would you write in that letter?
I think that the message would be something that I took in when I was right here in Aspen as a Henry Crown Fellow. Lovevery was my dream. It was my project as a Fellow.
What I would love to have told myself is that any vision that you believe is possible and to just continue to believe in yourself throughout all of the ups and downs.I think that the message would be something that I took in when I was right here in Aspen as a Henry Crown Fellow. Lovevery was my dream. It was my project as a Fellow.
About the Aspen Global Leadership Network
The Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) is a dynamic, worldwide community of nearly 4,000 entrepreneurial leaders from over 60 countries. Spanning business, government, and the nonprofit sector, these leaders share a commitment to enlightened leadership and the drive to tackle the most pressing challenges of our times. Through transformative Fellowship programs and gatherings like the Resnick Aspen Action Forum, AGLN Fellows have the unique opportunity to connect, collaborate, and challenge each other to grow and commit to a lifelong journey of impact.
More from 2025 Resnick Aspen Action Forum
In July 2025, over 500 leaders across the Aspen Global Leadership Network (AGLN) community gathered for our largest Action Forum to date. Joined by nearly 100 young leaders, AGLN Fellows from more than 30 countries returned to the enduring questions first posed at at the founding of the Aspen Institute 75 years go: What does it mean to lead with purpose in times of profound uncertainty?
Explore more inspiring content on leadership and change-making from the 2025 Action Forum here.