Skip to main content
Connecticut College
  • About Connecticut College
  • Academics
  • Admission & Financial Aid
  • Alumni & Life After Conn
  • Athletics
  • Campus & Community
  • Career Preparation
  • Commencement
  • Defy Boundaries Campaign
  • Giving
  • Human Resources
  • Strategic Planning
  • Student Experience
  • Calendar
  • News
  • Directory
  • Employment
  • Libraries & Technology
  • CC Magazine
  • Site Map
Make a gift CamelWeb Today at Conn

Specialized Resources

  • Accessibility Services
  • Admission Deadlines
  • Admitted Students
  • Admitted Student Statistics
  • Arboretum
  • Arts and Culture
  • Bookshop
  • Campus Map
  • Clubs and Activities
  • Counseling Services
  • Directions to Campus
  • Essays That Worked
  • Financial Aid Services
  • Health Services
  • International Students
  • Interviewing
  • Libraries
  • Orientation
  • Request Information
  • Residential Life
  • Majors and Minors
  • Student Blog
  • Sustainability
  • Technology Services
  • Title IX: Sexual Respect
  • Transfer Students
  • Tuition and Fees
  • Transportation
  • Visit Campus
  • Academic Advising
  • Academic Calendar
  • Academic Resource Center
  • Arboretum
  • Arts and Culture
  • Camel Card Office
  • Campus Safety
  • Campus Map
  • Career Services
  • Class Schedules
  • Clubs and Student Engagement
  • Connections
  • Counseling Services
  • Course Catalog
  • Equity and Inclusion
  • Environmental Health & Safety
  • Global Focus
  • Health Services
  • Libraries
  • Residential Life
  • Sustainability
  • Technology Services
  • Title IX: Sexual Respect
  • Transportation
  • Academic Advising
  • Academic Calendar
  • Arboretum
  • Arts and Culture
  • Banner Self-Service
  • Camel Card Office
  • Campus Map
  • Campus Safety
  • Center for Teaching & Learning
  • Course Catalog
  • Course Information and Schedules
  • Equity and Inclusion
  • Employee Benefits
  • Environmental Health & Safety
  • Facilities Management
  • Human Resources
  • Instructional Technology
  • Libraries
  • Moodle
  • Sustainability
  • Technology Services
  • Title IX: Sexual Respect
  • Wellness Program
  • Academic Calendar
  • Academic Resource Center
  • Alcohol and Drug Education
  • Arboretum
  • Arts & Culture
  • Athletics Calendar
  • Bookshop
  • Camel Card Office
  • Campus Map
  • Campus Safety
  • Career Services
  • CARE Team
  • Commencement
  • Counseling Services
  • Equity and Inclusion
  • Fall Weekend
  • Applying for Financial Aid
  • First-Year Student FAQ
  • Global Focus
  • Health Services
  • Libraries
  • Orientation
  • Parent enewsletter
  • Parents Council
  • Residential Life
  • Resources for Parents and Families
  • Student Employment
  • Tuition and Fees
  • Visiting New London

 

  • Area Attractions & Events
  • Area Hotels
  • Arboretum
  • Arts and Culture
  • Bookshop
  • Campus Map
  • Campus Safety
  • The Children's Program
  • Community Learning/Volunteering
  • Directions
  • Events and Catering
  • Equity and Inclusion
  • Reserving Harkness Chapel
  • Local Restaurants and Dining
  • OnStage Performances
  • Transportation
  • Alumni Directory
  • Alumni Events
  • Alumni Association
  • Arts and Culture
  • Bookshop
  • Campus Map
  • Fall Weekend
  • Global Focus
  • Libraries
  • Library Databases
  • Notable Alumni
  • Email Help
  • Replacement Diploma
  • Reunion
  • Sponsor an Internship
  • Support the College
  • Title IX: Sexual Respect
  • Transcripts
  • Update Your Info
  • Volunteer
  • Post a job or internship
  • Explore employment programs
  • Learn about funded internships

The Second Shift

  • Home 
  • Home 
  • News 
  • News Archive 
  • 2016 
  • The Second Shift

The Second Shift

Through her business, the Second Shift, Gina Hadley ’91 is putting in the long hours so other women don’t have to.

By Maria P. Gonzalez

 

Whether working as a marketing executive in New York City, or launching her own business, Gina Hadley ’91 knows it’s all about the hustle.

“I think I’ve just always been a hustler,” Hadley said, a realization she came to gradually through marriage and into motherhood.

Fiercely driven and dedicated to work, Hadley, a mother of two, inevitably faced the choice between work and home once she became a mother. Striking a balance between both, in a way that worked for her, became the foundation of her online business, the Second Shift.

Launched in 2014 with her friend and partner Jenny Galluzzo, the online business connects smart, talented women, many of them mothers with backgrounds in marketing and finance, to short-term projects with established companies. The company draws women who have often stepped away from successful careers at top firms to stay home and raise children.

They are women with experiences and talents not unlike Hadley’s and Galluzzo’s: well-educated, creative, career-driven mothers and wives who want to redefine the traditional work experience.

“That's what the Second Shift is all about. It’s all about the hustle,” Hadley said. “It’s about trying to figure out alternative ways to work and still practice the craft you have spent your entire career building.”

The Second Shift has a two-fold mission, which is to bring top talent to businesses looking to outsource projects, while providing skilled women employment options on terms that work for them.

Founders Jenny Galluzzo and Gina Hadley '91

That simple mission tapped into a large community of women who yearned for work without having to sacrifice family time. The company earned early success, including a feature in The New York Times Fashion and Style section.

“If you want something done well and done quickly, give the work to a busy mom,” Pilar Guzmán, editor in chief of Condé Nast Traveler, told The Times.

The idea for the Second Shift began over casual conversation.

“It started from Jenny and I talking and talking and talking,” Hadley said. “One of the things that we constantly talked about was these extraordinary women that we knew who were not working, and were not practicing their craft.”

They started the business small, with their own money. Hadley built the first website, and worked off simple spreadsheets.

Today, the Second Shift facilitates work connections between 700 members and 75 businesses, ranging from large firms to small business owners. They have a dedicated office and staff, and an additional list of 5,000 women looking to join.

Over the summer, Hadley was in Seattle in talks with Amazon, Microsoft and Starbucks to expand the Second Shift’s network. She’s putting the world together in new ways— disrupting the status quo.

“These big companies, they understand that this is a way to get the best talent,” Hadley said. “We are trying to disrupt the traditional workplace. And it’s not just for the sake of disrupting, it’s because we have legions and legions of women who have no reason as to why they are not working. There is no reason why an employer is not engaging them.”

Years before becoming a business owner and a mother, Hadley was a graduate of Connecticut College, building on her English degree to earn an MFA in Shakespearean studies at New York University.

She tried teaching, which turned out to be less her speed, and instead found her stride in advertising. At the global advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather, Hadley served as a creative coordinator for IBM. She says the experiences of being in small classes translated into success.

“I feel like at Connecticut College, I had been given the tools to be able to explain myself, to be able to articulate an idea and also be able to have a position and defend it,” she said.

“Being in a small classroom setting at Conn really set me up for the collaborative work environment that I found when I went into advertising. And it helped tremendously in starting a business.”

The Hadleys have lived in Manhattan since 2012 with their daughter and son, now 14 and 10. Hadley had enjoyed working with Jay Galluzzo, founder of Flywheel, during the company’s expansion. She was even more impressed with his wife, Jenny Galluzzo, and they sparked an instant friendship. Becoming business partners followed soon after.

“Jenny and I always joke that now we’re working 12 and 14 hours a day, so women don’t ever have to again,” she said.

And for these working moms, the art of the hustle boils down to a woman’s right to work—on her terms.

“We want to create this ecosystem where women don’t ever have to fully step away,” she said.

“You can take a gig a month, or keep your contacts fresh, or do some sort of a sprinkle when you can. We want to be a tool, for businesses and for our members, that makes engaging with this demographic and continuing work for these women seamless.”




August 24, 2016

Related News & Media

Recent News

Communications leader Sally Susman ’84 to give keynote address at Commencement

Communications leader Sally Susman ’84 to give keynote address at Commencement

Campus News

'Jewel on the Thames'

'Jewel on the Thames'

Campus News

Connecticut College
270 Mohegan Avenue
New London, CT 06320
1 (860) 447-1911
admission@conncoll.edu
Web Privacy Policy
Web Accessibility Notice

Website Navigation

  • About Connecticut College
  • Academics
  • Admission & Financial Aid
  • Alumni & Life After Conn
  • Athletics
  • Campus & Community
  • Career Preparation
  • Commencement
  • Defy Boundaries Campaign
  • Giving
  • Human Resources
  • Strategic Planning
  • Student Experience
Make a gift CamelWeb Today at Conn
  • Calendar
  • News
  • Directory
  • Employment
  • Libraries & Technology
  • CC Magazine
  • Site Map

Social Media

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • LinkedIn