Women’s History Month Alumni Identity Spotlight: Julia Pimsleur ’90

Meet Julia Pimsleur ’90, CEO and founder of Million Dollar Women, entrepreneur, and bestselling author. In this Women’s History Month Alumni Identity Spotlight, Pimsleur shares her hopes for the alumni community to collectively advance change. 

This feature is part of a series focused on amplifying the voices of alumni who are making an impact today and illuminating how the identities we bring to Yale transform both our community and the world. 

What is your most enduring memory of your time at Yale?

Freshman year when I was meeting so many passionate, intellectually engaged and fired up people was almost sensory overload! I had come from a private school in NYC where there were plenty of smart kids, sure, but I had never been in an environment where pretty much anyone you talked to was going to teach you something, ask you amazing questions or be ready to go deep on topics ranging from art history to forestry to neuroscience. I remember staying up until 1:00 and 2:00 in the morning talking in Old Campus dorm rooms, not getting enough sleep, and loving it!

What is your hope for the future of the Yale alumni community?

We have a chance to leverage our global community of leaders to work toward solving some of the most intractable problems of our time, such as closing the economic and racial gender gap, innovating to counter climate change, and championing diversity and inclusion. We can also serve as mirrors for each other. Are we living up to the ideals we had as undergraduates? Are we supporting each other in our most ambitious endeavors and becoming the kind of leaders we looked up to when we were students? I see a lot of places where the answer is YES and also many where we can do so much more. Let's keep asking these questions and being the kinds of leader-seekers that Yale is so good at attracting and fostering.

What advice would you give to fellow or future Yalies? 

If you are ambitious and passionate, you are probably good at pushing past your “comfort zone” and driving relentlessly toward your goals. Celebrate that passion and persistence. But also make time to take a nap when you need it, to express gratitude daily, to practice self-care and self-compassion, and to ask other high achievers how to manage the downsides of your personality type. “The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships,” not the list of your accomplishments.

My definition of success: dream big, enlist others in your vision, show up consistently for the people you love and can help, and spend more time celebrating what is working than beating yourself up for what you could have or should have done!

Julia Pimsleur is a serial entrepreneur, scaling coach, TEDx speaker and bestselling author. She is founder and CEO of Million Dollar Women, the leading network for women entrepreneurs in the US and Canada, helping one million women get to $1 million in revenues.

Pimsleur is a second time founder, having built Little Pim, an Ed tech company, from a $30k investment into a multimillion-dollar business and is the author of two books: “Go Big Now” and the bestselling “Million Dollar Women.” Pimsleur hosts a live show on LinkedIn, “Go Big Now Live,” is an NLP master practitioner and mindset expert, and lives in NYC with her family.