Discover the Best Books Written by Jean Case

Jean Case is an American businesswoman, author, and philanthropist who is chair of the board of National Geographic, CEO of Case Impact Network, and CEO of the Case Foundation. She is married to AOL co-founder Steve Case. Case was born in Bloomington, Illinois and raised in Normal, Illinois before moving to Florida. She attended high school at the Westminster Academy in Fort Lauderdale, graduating in 1978.

Case began her career as the marketing manager with online information services Source Telecomputing Corporation (The Source) and joining a General Electric “team trying to drive disruptive innovation within a big company” at General Electric Information Services (GEnie). Case then joined America Online (AOL) when it was a small startup and was at the table as it grew into the company that provided Internet services to about half of all U.S. homes with Internet access, worked as director of marketing, vice president for marketing, and vice president for corporate communications. She left AOL in 1996.

She and her husband created the Case Foundation in 1997 and they joined the Giving Pledge in 2011, committing to give away a majority of their wealth. In June 2006, Case was appointed by President George W. Bush to chair the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation.

In 2007, Case was asked by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to serve as a co-chair of the U.S.-Palestinian Partnership to promote economic opportunities for the Palestinian people, prepare Palestinian youth for the responsibilities of citizenship and good governance, and marshal new private investment in the West Bank.

In 2016, Case gave a TedxMidAtlantic talk, where she highlighted the importance innovators have played in the history of the United States and examined modern entrepreneurship. In 2018, in reference to the under-representation of woman-founded and African-American-founded companies as recipients of venture capital, Case stated, "One thing we know for sure is talent is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not."

In 2021, she advocated for making it easier for inexperienced investors to make stock market bets. In February 2016, Case was elected chair of the National Geographic Society's board of trustees, the first woman to hold the position, and also serves on the boards of Accelerate Brain Cancer Cure, the White House Historical Association, and BrainScope Company, Inc., as well as the advisory councils of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and the Civil Society, Georgetown University's Beeck Center for Social Impact & Innovation, and the Brain Trust Accelerator Fund. 

Past board and advisory council leadership includes the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Initiative, the President's Council on Service and Civic Participation, and Malaria No More. Case has long been a "leader in impact investing" and was a cofounder of The ImPact, a membership network of family enterprises (family offices, foundations, and businesses) that are committed to making investments with measurable social impact and was a member of the U.S. NAB to the G7 Task Force on Impact Investing.

Case has been profiled for her impact investments by The New York Times, Financial Times, and Bloomberg News. Jean and Steve Case have personally invested in and leveraged new online platforms for social good, such as Network for Good, Causes, and MissionFish. In 2011, she opened Early Mountain Vineyards, a 300-acre property in Madison, Virginia, whose wines have won awards from Wine Enthusiast and USA Today. In 2018, Washington Post wine columnist Dave McIntyre wrote "Early Mountain is a Virginia winery riding a rocket."