Today we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Grossman.
Hi Jennifer, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was born in New Delhi India. My parents Bill and Melanie Grossman had eloped because of religious differences. My mom was Catholic from Louisiana and my Dad is Jewish, from New York. Mom’s family wanted her to marry in the Church, but Dad didn’t want to do that so he said leave it all behind, and she did.
They joined the Peace Corps and went to India! They took me all over India, I got to ride on elephants and I wore bells on my feet, I had a little boyfriend named Omar and I learned to speak Hindi. It was awesome. But then mom got stick — her heart wasn’t beating properly. She had to go to the hospital, and they had to send me back to the United States. I cried on the plane all the way to New York…
But then I fell in love with my Nana, who took care of me. She was a great painter, and sculptor and designer and taught me to embrace beauty and love. Later my parents came back and we moved to Massachusetts. My dad was a doctor and my mom was a social worker. My brother Edward and my sister Jessica was born. Mom was a feminist and cut my hair and tried to get me to wear things like overalls and flannel shirts. But I wanted grow my hair super long and wear sequins and be a Disco Queen. She said if you do that people will “Objectify” you.
So that’s when I became an Objectivist. JK. LoL.
I hated school. I was really different than the other kids. I was kind of a nerd on the inside but also kind of like a drag queen on the outside. I would wear my ballet costumes to school. I thought this was normal. But the other kids thought I was really really weird. They put me on trial for being “stuck up.” This meant thinking highly of yourself. Which I certainly did. The sentence was social exile. No one was allowed to look at me or speak to me. It was called the IHJ club. The ringleader was this girl Darlene would bully me and push me around.
One day I asked her “what do I need to do to get you to leave me alone?” Her answer: “Kill Yourself.” Not an option. I loved my life and I certainly wasn’t going to sacrifice it for someone who hated me. So….it was then that I started thinking that not only was it impossible to make other people like you but that it was wrong to rely on other people to feel good about yourself. So I gave up on being popular and focused instead on being smart.
I decided I would get the best grades and try to get into the best school. So when I got into Harvard, I said “Yes!” it was worth it. I was really curious about other countries and about the way the world works so I studied government. So after school, I moved to the government town — Washington D.C. And then I got a job at the White House. So I started researching and then writing speeches for the President of the United States. It was incredible. I had many great mentors and learned from many great teachers….
But while I was at the Cato Institute, I discovered the greatest teacher of them all. Ayn Rand was an incredible woman, a courageous refugee from Russia who stood up to Communism and fascism and braved all kinds of criticism to share her vision for a better more peaceful world. She wrote about strong women like Dagny in Atlas Shrugged, and Kira in We the Living, and Dominique in the Fountainhead.
I changed my license plate to Ayn Rand and set out for Malibu, California — for a new life and a new job. I bought a house. I learned to surf I started a Nutrition Institute. Life was good. And then my house burned down….
All my grandmother’s paintings, all my books, all my photos, all my clothes…..I lost everything I ever owned.
But what I did have was my mind and the philosophical resources I learned from Ayn Rand. I also thought about how she came to this country with nothing, she came to LA with nothing, and look what she created.
So I picked myself up pulled myself up and started to rebuild. I built the kind of house I thought Howard Roark might build…
Now I share my home not through force as under socialism but through voluntary association and capitalistic innovation.
I’ve hosted Airbnb guests from all over the United States and all over the world. I always tell them about Ayn Rand and share what I’ve learned.
No wonder I’ve had to buy Atlas Shrugged in five languages.
So when David Kelley the great philosopher asked if I would join him to help take Ayn Rand’s message to new audiences there was no other answer I could give…
YES.
Ayn Rand helped me be stronger, freer, fiercer, and clearer. Her books and ideas helped me live my fullest life. My way to help other people is to teach them about these ideas…. We all have an Atlas inside of us….
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Most challenges can be transformed into opportunities if you’re able to conquer fear, overcome your internal negativity and think outside the box. One example of that for The Atlas Society came in March of 2020 when lockdowns forced cancellations of the 12 student events we annually attend to deploy speakers and engage with young people. In response, we started a weekly webinar program — The Atlas Society Asks — which continues to this day, with about 140 episodes under our belt, where I interview leading entrepreneurs, authors and artists, such as lululemon’s Chip Wilson, Peter Diamandis of XPrize, Whole Foods founder John Mackey, etc.
During lockdowns, another challenge occurred when a different Ayn Rand organization took government bailout money — which we at The Atlas Society emphatically rejected. Some people confused us with the government bailout group, which horrified me, but which also presented an opportunity for me to make the case for why we did NOT take government funds — and never would. This emphatic statement of our principled stand led to many new donors stepping forward to support our work.
Another challenge presented itself in the form of shadow banning from social media platforms during the lockdowns on content that diverged from the consensus narrative. Since social media companies were curbing our ability to reach domestic audiences, we started experimenting with translating our videos for foreign audiences. Our content proved particularly popular in Latin America, and that led to our forming Sociedad Atlas as a Spanish language division under The Atlas Society umbrella. Under the able leadership of my colleague Antonella Marty, we’ve managed to publish several Spanish language books, an expanding library of Spanish language videos and memes, and next year we’re partnering with Universidad Francisco Marroquin for our first-ever Spanish language conference in Guatemala.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Seven years ago, the founder and trustees of The Atlas Society recruited me to run the 30-year-old nonprofit dedicated to spreading the ideas of Ayn Rand. Since her literature had impacted me so profoundly, it was an intriguing opportunity. Professionally it was intriguing as well since I’d spent the previous 12 years as a Senior Vice President at a multinational fruit and vegetable company but had worked in the think tank world — as Director of Education Policy at the Cato Institute — two decades prior. In those intervening decades, technology had wildly disrupted and transformed communication through social media, particularly regarding the transmission of ideas. Think tanks are in the idea business — but returning to the space, I was shocked to see how little it had changed. The focus was still white papers and policy reports, with very little attention to leveraging new technologies to transact ideas. I set out to have The Atlas Society dominate social media through visually creative and edgy memes, as well as animated short videos in the “Draw My Life” genre.
I started out producing an animated video “My Name is Ayn Rand” that I wrote, drew, and narrated myself — with a Russian accent thanks to a neighbor who coaches Hollywood actors on foreign accents. Since then we’ve produced dozens featuring historical characters like Frederick Douglass and Karl Marx, places like Venezuela and Cuba, fictional characters like Howard Roark (from The Fountainhead) and Dagny Taggart (from Atlas Shrugged), and concepts like Envy, Victimhood and Socialism. The English versions average a million views each — but increasingly we’re producing foreign adaptations that have attracted up to 8 million views each. Our top foreign markets are now India, Brazil and the Middle East.
This strategy is working. Of the 50 pieces of content we post to social media each week, each single piece gets an average of 26,000 comments, shares and likes. We maintain a dashboard monitoring our performance against other similar organizations in our space, and our engagement is consistently at least ten times that of other groups — usually much, much more. But the tactic of posting engaging content is just part of a larger strategy of establishing a distribution network that we can leverage to recruit young people to attend our online seminars, our summer conference and to invite them on a journey of advanced engagement with our articles, books, and our faculty of academic experts in philosophy and economics.
We’ve also cornered the graphic novel market — partnering with Inkwell Award-winning Marvel Comics illustrator Dan Parsons to produce graphic novel adaptations of Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem and her screenplay Red Pawn. We’re soon to publish a third graphic novel based on notes Ayn Rand made for a screenplay about the Manhattan Project and the making of the first atomic bombs. We’ve just signed an additional artist to begin work on a graphic novel of The Fountainhead. We’re definitely the only nonprofit think tank making the rounds on the Comicon circuit, where the graphic novels we distribute through that channel now rival the volume we move through partnerships with student organizations. Finally on the artistic front, we also recruited Nick Gaetano out of retirement — he’s the artist behind the famous art deco covers of Ayn Rand’s books — and commissioned five portraits of characters from Atlas Shrugged.
While our artistic, creative approach sets us apart, more fundamentally it’s the way we approach Ayn Rand’s philosophy. We embrace Open Objectivism — as opposed to the Closed Objectivism espoused by other groups. The three components of Open Objectivism are a commitment to tolerant, non-dogmatic discourse, an entrepreneurial, open orientation to possible partners, and a belief that Objectivism can be extended based on new discoveries. This open approach has empowered flourishing partnerships across the liberty movement, vastly expanding the audience we’re able to introduce to Ayn Rand’s ideas.
Of course, we’re also known for our amazing annual galas — the last three have been held in Malibu. We’ve honored high-powered Ayn Rand fans like Peter Thiel, lululemon founder Chip Wilson, and XPrize founder Peter Diamandis. These glamorous events provide an opportunity for community for our supporters across the country — and increasingly across the world — while providing funding for our educational work.
In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
The think tank space will continue to reward players with creativity, and creativity is only possible for the independent thinker. Creativity is possible only to those who are not just willing to make mistakes — but who embrace mistakes as part of the innovation process. People often ask me how The Atlas Society manages to be so creative on a consistent basis, and I say it’s because we take ideas seriously, but we don’t take ourselves so, so seriously. Because of this we’re aggressively taking risks, pushing boundaries, and finding new ways to advance Ayn Rand’s ideas.
The think tank space will also reward players who are able to demonetize, dematerialize and democratize their products and services. This can be very challenging for legacy organizations who are committed to 20th-century models of education. Rather than embracing a stewardship mindset, organizations need to embrace a startup mindset and find ways to leverage emerging exponential communication technologies to take their message and materials to new, increasingly global audiences. The stewardship mindset of legacy organizations may feel safe, like standing firm on solid ground — but in today’s world of technology-driven exponential change, standing still means falling behind.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.atlassociety.org
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/atlassociety
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/AtlasSociety
- Twitter: @TheAtlasSociety
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPLjGLElB8hKpUkiZ1mnxeg
