Founder · Speaker · Writer
Jill Cornell Gwaltney
Keynote speaker and adviser on leadership, resilience, and creative thinking under pressure. She built the country’s largest woman-owned advertising agency — and brings four decades of building, scaling, and mentoring to audiences around the world.
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About Jill
From a four-person startup to the largest woman-owned agency in the country — and the mentorship that shaped it all.
Jill Cornell Gwaltney founded Rauxa in 1999 with just four employees and grew it into the largest woman-owned independent advertising agency in the United States, serving Fortune 500 brands before its sale to Publicis Groupe in 2019. What began as a direct mail agency focused on creative and production expanded over time in response to clients’ needs, adding strategy, data, technology, video content, and media capabilities. Before founding Rauxa, Gwaltney spent two decades in the printing business, rising from being the first female sales representative at her father’s company to president, where she led the company’s transformation and eventual sale.
Today, Jill’s audiences don't get your typical business pep talk. They get four decades of building, scaling, and mentoring — translated into ideas leaders can use the moment they walk out of the room.
It started with her father, Clark Cornell. A WWII fighter pilot who survived 62 days behind enemy lines on ingenuity alone, Clark built his postwar life around a single belief: figure out what people need, and help them get it done. “Write Big So You Can Think Clearly” is the mantra and story of how that philosophy traveled from a cockpit to a drafting table to a boardroom — and the name of Jill's signature keynote and forthcoming book.
Jill (left) with her team at Rauxa.
320+
Employees across 7 offices at the agency she built
$120M
In revenue before its sale to Publicis Groupe
#1
Largest woman-owned independent agency in the U.S.
2018
Named an Adweek Disruptor for leadership in the industry
Key Ideas
Leadership as emotional infrastructure
Steadiness, trust, and clarity are not soft skills. They are the structure decisions rest on when the pressure is highest.
Resilience through action
You don't always need the perfect solution — only one that is survivable and actionable. Movement is its own kind of answer. As Jill’s dad used to say, “No decision is a decision.”
Creativity as survival
Creative thinking isn't ornamental. It's the adaptive instinct that carries people through war, entrepreneurship, and reinvention alike.
Business as human behavior
The strongest strategies come from empathy, curiosity, and observation — reading people as carefully as you read a market.
Mentorship shapes identity
Being deeply believed in by someone can change the entire trajectory of a life. Confidence is built relationally, then carried forward.
Intergenerational wisdom
How emotional and intellectual frameworks move through families, mentorship, and professional life — and what we choose to pass on.
The story behind the philosophy — and how any leader can use it.
Clark Cornell was born May 29th, 1924. On March 14th 1945, at just twenty years old, Clark Cornell crashed his plane behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia. He survived for 62 days on foot, relying on nothing but ingenuity and creative problem-solving. Those same principles built his postwar life — and shaped his daughter.
Jill turns those unique father-daughter lessons into a powerful keynote that moves audiences and sends them back to work with something usable: how to think clearly under pressure, lead with empathy, and find the survivable answer when the perfect one doesn't exist.
Book Jill for your team
Jill speaks to leadership teams, founders, conferences, sports teams, and audiences navigating change — keynotes told through story rather than slideware, tuned to the room and what it's facing.
Available as a keynote, fireside chat, or panel. Travels from Laguna Beach, California.
Talk topics
Leadership under uncertainty
Creativity and problem-solving
Mentorship and intergenerational leadership
Resilience and reinvention
Empathy in business
Jill with Gina Smith, whom Jill mentored from receptionist to CEO of Rauxa.
Recent Media
Jill Gwaltney joins Howard Wolf for a conversation with the Stanford community on a guiding philosophy: do what's right for the client, and don't stop until you've exceeded their expectations.