Jen Rubio
# Jen Rubio

Jennifer Rubio is an American businesswoman. She is the co-founder, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Away, a luggage manufacturer and retailer. Rubio has served as head of social media at Warby Parker and global director of innovation at fashion company AllSaints.

## Early life

Rubio was born in the Philippines, and moved to New Jersey when she was seven years old. She grew up traveling, and lived in seven cities on three continents. When she was young, Rubio bought a lemonade stand from another child who lived on her street for $20 which she borrowed from her father. She has called it her first merger and acquisition. Rubio later went on to attend college at Penn State University, where she pursued a supply-chain management major. She was placed at Johnson & Johnson as part of Penn State's co-op program. After discovering her desire to be a businesswoman, Rubio dropped out of Penn State just a few credits shy of graduating, in order to pursue a full-time role at Neutrogena, a company with whom she did another co-op.

## Career

In 2011, Rubio was recruited by and joined Warby Parker, leading the company's early content and partnership work as its Head of Social Media. She met Away co-founder Stephanie Korey during her time at Warby Parker. In 2013, she left Warby Parker and went to London, where she was global director of innovation for clothing brand AllSaints. She spent much of a year traveling for the position.

Before Warby Parker, Rubio held different marketing and social media roles, working for brands on the agency side and in-house. She also taught social media as an adjunct professor at Miami Ad School. She has been a guest lecturer at Hyper Island, New York University, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, and Harvard University.

Rubio co-founded Away, a direct-to-consumer travel and luggage company, with Stephanie Korey, who also worked at Warby Parker. By 2017, Rubio and Korey had raised $31 million, making it one of the largest seed financed female-backed startups.

## Personal life

In May 2019, Rubio got engaged to her boyfriend, Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield.

