Bio

Jillian has a passion for ice cream that's equal to her passion for entrepreneurship and innovation. There's a reason for this - As a business leader, Jillian founded Dolce Friot, a specialty frozen desserts company that built on her prior operations experience in her family's ice cream business, Kimball Farm. The compassion for founders that Jillian gained from starting her own business led her to join the small team that built the global Startup Program for Dassault Systemes SOLIDWORKS, with a community of over 15,000 startups. Jillian developed strategies and partnerships that now serve those startups, as well as hundreds of Accelerators, Incubators, & Makerspaces and Venture Capital organizations globally. She accomplished through managing relationships and ensuring mutual benefit for the those in the startup ecosystem as well as Dassault's Global Partner Network and internal stakeholders. A passion for community and innovation is at the heart of Jillian's partnerships and programs. Jillian brought this passion to Orbit.love to help startups and organizations build meaningful communities with the power of Orbit.love. Jillian is growing the Customer Love Team, which is responsible for guiding customers and startups through Orbit’s “Customer Love Continuum”. The Customer Love Team is focused on ensuring that Orbit customers are successful, supported, and feel the love from the Orbit team. When not supporting startups and building strategy, you can find Jillian traveling to the best homemade ice cream shops, creating in a FabLab, painting on canvases and flying toward her pilot's license. Top 40 Under 40 MBJ: http://bit.ly/3FTaFaU Everyday Entrepreneur: https://bit.ly/3VS8n1n TEDx Speaker https://entrepreneurship.babson.edu/babson-ted-talks-top-10/ SXSW Pitch Advisory Board Member https://www.sxsw.com/awards/sxsw-pitch/ Startup Of The Year Judge https://summit.startupofyear.com/ Inventures Advisory Board https://inventurescanada.com/ Start Co. Mentor: http://neverstop.co/ MassInnovations Night Mentor: https://mass.innovationnights.com/content/jillian-friot-0 https://picante.today/it-industry/2019/07/09/55520/mass-innovation-nights-formlabs-and-dassault-systemes-support-local-entrepreneurs-and-showcase-new-innovative-products/ MassChallenge Mentor: 2018 - 2021 SOLIDWORKS xChallenge 2019 Judge: https://blogs.solidworks.com/teacher/2020/01/congratulations-to-the-winners-of-the-solidworks-xchallenge-2019.html