Sarah Hodges believes Boston can be the center of the blockchain universe, but it would help if people understood the function and purpose behind the tech buzzword. To that end, the Pillar venture capital partner has been a key organizer of Boston Blockchain Week. Over the next several days, a series of discussions and activities are scheduled to help explain the potential for a technology that can validate transactions without the help of a middleman such as a bank. It’s just the latest undertaking for Hodges. She built a post-college retail job into a marketing and technology role that brought her to Boston. She later worked for Carbonite and Runkeeper, then co-founded Intelligent.ly, a leadership coaching platform. She also worked as an executive at Smarterer, a training startup bought by a Utah company, and joined Pillar in 2016. Hodges, 36, sat down to talk about how her career has evolved.
1. The California native hitched a ride to Boston on one of the original breakout brands from Fanueil Hall. She joined the Chicago store of Pavo Real as a clerk selling clothes and decor, and eventually helped the company build an e-commerce business.
“About three months in, I started talking with the owners who had been thinking about winding down the business, and saw an opportunity to bring this online. At 23, they took this unbelievable risk on me, made me a partner at the business. They let me take the business online, turn it into e-commerce, direct mail. We closed all our retail stores and [I] moved here to Boston, where our headquarters was.”
2. When Delta Air Lines awarded Hodges its coveted Diamond Medallion designation because of how frequently she flew back and forth from Utah after the acquisition of Smarterer, Hodges knew it was time to find a new gig.
“I was on a Delta Air Lines flight, like a year and a half into this, and a flight attendant came over and said, `Thank you for being Delta Diamond.’ And I said, I have got to leave this job. I don’t want to be on a Delta Air Lines flight anymore. It’s just like I’m living on a dirty airplane, and this is my life. When I was younger, I thought it was very cool to have airline status, and then you get airline status, and you realize you’re just living a miserable existence. It’s awful.”
3. She grew up in a family of educators, so Hodges figured she’d never be interested in teaching. But she eventually realized she had incorporated a lot of what she had learned at home into her tech career.
“I spent 18 years of my life listening to my parents coming home and talking about how hard it was to be educators. They made no money. They put in tons of hours of time and energy, and they cared for their students so much. It was just a tough world. When I started Intelligent.ly, my dad started sending me all these leadership books from when he got his degree, and it brought us back together in a way. Intelligent.ly had and has a commitment to hands-on learning, to helping people learn from each other, to really tailoring their experience to what individual people need. I think those are things that my parents did really well in the classroom. I may not have been aware of it at the time, but I’m sure I soaked up some of that from them.”
4. She worked with her husband, Dave Balter, at Smarterer, and they co-founded Intelligent.ly, which is shutting down this month. She’s not sure about ever again running a family business.
“You have certain dynamics that exist in your relationship at home, and work dynamics are often very different from those. That’s a hard thing to balance. When I worked with Dave, the wonderful things [were] that we know each other so well, that we can play off each other. We love to create and build things together. When that’s working well, it’s off the charts, but then at the same time, there’s a power dynamic at play in any business. Dave and I are too similar in many ways. We oftentimes stepped on each other’s toes when we worked in the same business.”
5. There’s one skill she’s not using anymore. As a teenager, Hodges went to clown camp, and she learned to juggle while riding a unicycle. She and her cousin rode together in a July 4 parade one year.
“I don’t think I could do it anymore. [We wore] Navy blue and white striped shirts with giant red bows in our hair. There’s a picture of us, but hopefully it’s been buried somewhere and can’t be found.”
Andy Rosen can be reached at andrew.rosen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @andyrosen.