Stephanie Hickman Boyse is CEO and co-founder of Jebbee, an AI-powered career discovery and mentoring platform that helps students explore careers, understand educational pathways, and connect with professionals who can guide their decision-making. She is also an alumna of Michigan State University, where she studied advertising and began building the foundation for a career focused on business, leadership, and workforce development.
Before launching Jebbee, Boyse spent more than two decades as CEO of Brazeway, a global manufacturing company specializing in refrigeration, HVAC, and automotive cooling components. In that role, she led international operations and was deeply involved in workforce development, talent pipelines, and partnerships with schools and industry organizations.
Across her career in manufacturing and leadership, she also served in governance and advisory roles, including board service with organizations such as Tecumseh Products Company, further expanding her experience in industrial strategy and organizational leadership.
Boyse founded Jebbee after recognizing a consistent gap in how students explore careers and make decisions about their futures. Through conversations with students, educators, and families, she saw that many young people lack meaningful exposure to careers beyond their immediate environments, as well as access to real-world perspectives that could inform their choices.
Jebbee reflects her belief that career development should be continuous, accessible, and grounded in real-world insight. The platform combines short-form video, AI-driven recommendations, and mentorship connections to help students better understand themselves and the world of work.
Boyse’s work is centered on expanding access to opportunity and helping students move from uncertainty to informed confidence as they consider their next steps in education and career planning.
Tell us about your company and the problem it solves, or its benefit to learners or educators.
When I started talking with students about their future plans, I realized something that surprised me. Most of them weren’t struggling because they lacked ambition. They were struggling because they lacked exposure. They didn’t know what careers existed, they didn’t understand how different educational pathways connected to those careers, and they often didn’t have enough people in their lives who could answer the questions they were asking.
I spent more than 20 years as CEO of a global manufacturing company, and throughout that time I was deeply involved in mentoring, workforce development, and partnerships with schools. I saw firsthand how important it is for young people to understand the opportunities available to them. But it wasn’t until I started having conversations with my own daughter and her friends that I realized how disconnected many students felt from the entire career development process. They were being asked to make important decisions about college, majors, and careers without really understanding what was on the other side of those decisions.
That’s why we created Jebbee.
At its core, Jebbee is designed to help students become more self-aware, explore opportunities, and connect with people who can help guide them. We often describe it as “TikTok meets LinkedIn for students” because it combines short-form video content with career exploration, school matching, mentoring, and AI-powered discovery tools. Students can learn about careers directly from professionals, explore colleges and trade schools, discover opportunities they may never have heard of before, and connect all of that information back to their own interests, strengths, and goals.
One of the things I’m most passionate about is helping students understand that career development is a journey, not a one-time decision. Too often we ask students what they want to be before we’ve helped them understand who they are. What are they interested in? What are they naturally good at? What kind of environment helps them thrive? Once students begin answering those questions, the conversation about careers becomes much more meaningful.
For educators and counselors, Jebbee is designed to extend the incredible work they’re already doing. We know they’re stretched thin, and there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to provide individualized career exploration for every student. Our goal is to bring together students, schools, families, businesses, and mentors in a way that expands access and exposure. At the end of the day, that’s what Jebbee is really about—helping every student discover what’s possible and giving them the confidence to pursue a future that fits who they are.
Where did the idea come from to create your company?
Around my kitchen table!
At the time, I was still serving as CEO of a manufacturing company and had spent more than two decades working with employees, mentoring young professionals, and helping build talent pipelines. One evening, my daughter and several of her friends were sitting around our kitchen table talking about their future plans. They had recently gone through some career exploration activities at school, and the conversation quickly turned into a discussion about careers, college, and what they wanted to do after graduation.
What struck me was how many questions they had and how few answers they were getting.
One student was convinced he wanted a particular career because of a movie character. Another felt anxious because he was being pushed toward an academic pathway that didn’t align with his interests. Most of them admitted they weren’t really sure what they wanted to do. As we talked, they started asking questions about jobs, industries, educational requirements, and career paths. They were smart, curious kids, but they simply didn’t have enough exposure to understand the possibilities available to them.
The moment that really changed my perspective came the next day when I realized my own daughter didn’t fully understand what my company did. She had grown up around the business. She knew many of our employees. She had spent years hearing me talk about work. Yet when I asked her to explain what we actually manufactured, she got it completely wrong. We laughed about it, but it made me stop and think.
If my own daughter didn’t understand the careers and opportunities that existed in her own backyard, how could we expect students to navigate thousands of possible career paths?
That question led to dozens of conversations with students, parents, teachers, counselors, employers, and higher education leaders. No matter where I looked, I kept hearing the same themes. Students were overwhelmed. Educators needed more resources. Employers wanted better ways to connect with future talent. Everyone agreed that students needed more exposure to careers and more opportunities to ask questions.
Eventually, I realized this was a problem I couldn’t stop thinking about. I retired from my role as CEO and decided to dedicate the next chapter of my career to helping solve it. Jebbee was born from a simple belief: every student deserves access to the information, mentoring, and opportunities that can help them discover a future they’re excited about.
Tell us about one challenge and how you overcame that challenge.
One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced is figuring out how to scale something that has traditionally been very personal: mentoring.
Throughout my career, I’ve been fortunate to mentor students, young professionals, and emerging leaders. I’ve also spent countless hours speaking at schools, participating in career days, and working with workforce development programs. Those experiences reinforced something I strongly believe: meaningful conversations can change a student’s life. Sometimes all it takes is one person answering a question, sharing a career journey, or helping a student see a possibility they hadn’t considered before.
The challenge, of course, is that there aren’t enough hours in the day for those conversations to happen at the scale students need them. School counselors are carrying enormous caseloads. Teachers are balancing countless responsibilities. Employers want to help but often struggle to find sustainable ways to engage with students. At the same time, students need more exposure than ever because the world of work is changing so quickly. New careers are emerging, industries are evolving, and many of the jobs students will eventually hold don’t even exist yet.
As we developed Jebbee, we realized that technology alone wasn’t the answer. We didn’t want to build another database of occupations or another assessment that students complete once and forget about. We wanted to create something that preserved the human element of mentoring while making it available to far more students.
That’s where the concept of what we call “mass mentoring” came from. Through Jebbee, students can learn directly from professionals, watch career-focused content, participate in virtual career exploration experiences, and gain insights from people they may never have the opportunity to meet in person. A professional can answer questions for one student, and those insights can potentially help hundreds or even thousands of others.
What helped us overcome this challenge was recognizing that career development isn’t about replacing human relationships with technology. It’s about using technology to create more opportunities for those relationships to happen. Every feature we’ve built comes back to that idea. How do we help students ask better questions? How do we increase exposure? How do we connect people who can help each other?
When we stay focused on those questions, we’re able to build solutions that feel both scalable and deeply personal.
What are you most proud of or what is your company’s greatest achievement?
What makes me most proud isn’t a specific feature, milestone, or growth metric. It’s seeing students discover possibilities for themselves that they didn’t know existed before.
From the beginning, Jebbee has been built around the simple belief that every student deserves access to the kind of career guidance, mentoring, and exposure that can help them make informed decisions about their future. Unfortunately, access to those opportunities is often uneven. Some students grow up surrounded by professionals who can answer questions and open doors. Others have tremendous potential but far fewer opportunities to explore careers or connect with people who can help them navigate the process.
One of the things I’m most proud of is that we’ve been able to create a platform that helps level that playing field. We’ve heard from students who discovered career paths they had never considered, educators who use Jebbee to supplement career exploration programs, and parents who finally feel like they have a practical way to help their children navigate conversations about college and careers. We’ve also seen businesses, schools, and professionals come together around a shared goal of supporting students. That collaboration is incredibly meaningful because preparing young people for the future shouldn’t fall on schools alone. It takes an entire community.
I’m also proud that we’ve stayed focused on our mission. Jebbee is free for students, families, and schools because we believe access matters. Every decision we’ve made has been guided by asking, “how do we make it easier for students to understand themselves, explore opportunities, and find a path that fits who they are?”
If there’s one achievement that stands above the rest, it’s creating a platform that helps students replace uncertainty with confidence. When a student begins to understand their strengths, sees a future that excites them, and realizes there are people willing to help them get there, that’s a meaningful outcome. Those moments are why we built Jebbee in the first place.
Where do you see your company in five years?
Five years from now, I hope Jebbee is recognized as the place where students begin exploring their future.
Today, career development is often fragmented. Students may take an assessment in one place, research colleges somewhere else, search for internships on another platform, and rely on social media or word of mouth for career information. Our vision is to bring those experiences together in a way that feels engaging, personalized, and relevant to the way students actually learn and explore.
We’re already helping students discover careers, learn about educational pathways, and connect with mentors. Over the next several years, we plan to continue expanding that ecosystem. That includes deeper connections to internships, scholarships, work-based learning opportunities, and other experiences that help students move from exploration to action.
I’m particularly excited about the role technology can play in making career development more personalized. Students shouldn’t receive the same information simply because they’re the same age. Every student has different interests, strengths, goals, and circumstances. We want Jebbee to continue evolving into a platform that helps students navigate those differences and receive guidance that feels uniquely relevant to them.
At the same time, I hope we remain grounded in the human side of this work. Technology can help students discover opportunities, but people inspire them to pursue those opportunities. That’s why mentoring, storytelling, and authentic career experiences will always be central to what we do.
Ultimately, success for Jebbee isn’t measured by how many users we have or how many features we build. It’s measured by whether more students feel confident about their future. If five years from now we’ve helped millions of young people better understand themselves, discover possibilities they didn’t know existed, and connect with pathways that lead to meaningful careers, I’ll consider that an extraordinary success.