Collision on my 39th birthday pushed me to start my own company

Christina Jones had built a fast-paced career and felt constant pressure to prove her worth. While driving to a restaurant to celebrate her 39th birthday on January 18, 2025, with her husband, Jason, and two friends, her car collided with a tractor-trailer. They were traveling at a low speed and emerged relatively unscathed with a few scratches; the experience was traumatic and made her reassess how she was spending her time.

She traces some of that drive back to early lessons about having to do twice as much to get half of what others have, a pressure she felt especially as a Black woman. Once, working late on a policy document while her infant son slept, a colleague told her, "You don't need to be in here so late." Rather than stop, Jones began schedule-sending late-night emails to appear at normal hours, and triple-checking details became second nature.

The crash pushed her to act on a long-standing idea to start her own consultancy.

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