Kontrary picks up where the rest of the web left off. It’s career, business, start-up and life advice that works.

Rebecca Thorman

Short Bio

Rebecca Thorman writes a different take on careers, marketing, business, start-ups, and life for professionals and creatives on Kontrary, which offers access to her insights weekly.

Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Huffington Post, Forbes, Los Angeles Times, the Washingtonian and Wall Street Journal among others. In addition, she has spoken at many conferences and meetups, and has contributed to influential online publications including Penelope Trunk’s blog, Conversation Agent, and many more.

Rebecca and her boyfriend Ryan, co-founder and COO of BrazenCareerist.com, currently reside in Washington, DC where she works remotely for the start-up company Alice.com, loves to test ideas, run and actively has a lot up her sleeve.

Long Bio

Fresh-faced and eager, Rebecca jumped at the chance to work for an environmental consulting company called MEG after college, but was quickly disillusioned by the small impact she was making. She left to work at the non-profit SVDP, where she learned to work in a trailer by day and throw swanky parties at night. Every day, Rebecca was able to talk face-to-face to the people she was helping and it remains one of her most rewarding work experiences.

During that time, she was inspired to start her first blog after often disagreeing with another blogger named Ryan Healy. That young fellow would later become her boyfriend. Rebecca’s blog was eventually featured in a variety of news outlets including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, was widely syndicated, and would score her several speaking engagements and keynotes at all the cool conferences.

Rebecca’s next challenge was as Executive Director of MAGNET, the country’s premier young professional organization in Madison, Wisconsin, where she actively worked with the established and next generation of leaders. And for a bit, she ran that city. She soon noticed however that all the cool people worked for start-ups and finagled her way into a position at Alice.com. There, she was finally relieved not to be working for an acronym.

In addition to her work at Alice, Rebecca often consults with other start-ups and ruthlessly tests her own ideas using the lean start-up method. She is obsessed with systems, which is just a fancy-pants way of saying how things are connected. Kontrary is her main business focus now. She is actively learning how to code and enjoys programming just as much as writing.

Rebecca and Ryan currently reside in Washington, DC where she continues to work for Alice remotely, spreading the joy of receiving toilet paper and toothpaste in the mail. Ryan now runs the start-up company he co-founded, BrazenCareerist.com, as the COO. He blogs occasionally too, except now Rebecca likes what he has to say.

In her spare time, Rebecca actively has a lot up her sleeve. Like most young women, she wants to “change things” and is working out just what that means. She also loves the standard traveling, cooking, eating, photography, running, bicycling, and reading books in non-Kindle format.

Disclaimer: The opinions blogged herein represent only those of Rebecca Thorman and do not reflect those of her employer or clients, previous employers or clients, persons or companies mentioned herein, or anyone else.