Jessica Kim ’00

Adjunct Lecturer

Jessica Nam Kim is the Co-founder/CEO of ianacare on a mission to encourage, equip, and empower family caregivers as they navigate the complex journey of caring for a loved one at home. Her dedication to caregiving comes from her own experience of being her mom’s primary caregiver who fought a seven-year battle with pancreatic cancer and shortly after for her father who had congestive heart failure. ianacare’s solution combines deep AI technology with an anthropological and human-centered approach.

Prior to ianacare, Jessica built brands and consumer-focused solutions as a serial entrepreneur. At the age of 19, she started a baked good company called Jessica’s Wonders out of her college dorm room. She raised $1M in funding her senior year (with braces) and grew it to national distribution. She then went to work at Kraft Foods in brand management where she led a cross-functional team for top performing brands. In 2008, Jessica was the founder/CEO of BabbaCo, a parenting solution that aggregated resources through subscription activity boxes and multi-media content. BabbaCo was acquired in 2014 by Barefoot Books, a global multi-cultural children’s publishing company, where she served as President for two years before becoming an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at a venture capital firm, CRV (Charles River Ventures).

Jessica was honored as Crain’s Top 40 under 40, Women in HealthTech, Inc’s Female Founders list, and was the inaugural EIR at Brown University Nelson Center of Entrepreneurship. She currently serves as a Venture Partner at Praxis Labs, Presidential Council advisor at Brown University, a board member of Be the Bridge (racial reconciliation), and an advisor to several startups.

Jessica graduated from Brown University and received her MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She lives in Boston with her husband and three children.