Maria Boulden: Properly terrifying

Choosing the day

After successful executive roles at DuPont and Gartner, Maria Boulden has pivoted to quickly build a profitable boutique jam business.

Her days are still full, but of the things she chooses. She schedules the commercial kitchen from 7 to 10 in the morning, makes 215 to 300 jars with her team, then spends afternoons on advisory calls with C-suite executives, beach time with her husband Ron, and board meetings where being “properly terrifying” still serves a purpose.

Someone at Gartner gave her that title, claiming it combined her compassionate servant leadership style with her very high expectations of those she led and served. She thought it was one of the most beautiful compliments anyone had ever given her. Her youngest son David even memorialized it on a plaque for her 60th birthday.

Maria spent 40 years at DuPont running billion-dollar commercial segments. Corian. Kevlar. Nomex. Tyvek. She traveled more than 80 percent of the time. International flight crews knew her by name. This is where “properly terrifying” was born as she told her global teams: “My expectations are high. It is not my aspiration that the people around me operate at a world class level. It is my expectation.”

That approach brought millions to DuPont’s bottom line. She fixed broken sales teams, found profitability leakage, and proved that world-class commercial professionals aren’t born that way. They’re trained, developed, and conditioned. That became her brand.

But at 60, on the eve of more work travel, David asked a question that changed everything: “When is it enough, Mom? You’ve had a pretty stellar career.” You certainly don’t need to work anymore. You and dad are steps from the beach in the house you always wanted. Why are you still doing this?

She couldn’t answer him.

Learning to recalibrate

Twenty-six years earlier, David was born at 1 pound 14 ounces with 50 percent survival odds. Her father had just died. DuPont told her stepping back would derail her career, a status they referred to as “red-lined.” She told them to hand her the pen. The Six Sigma role she took to stay under 40 hours a week and work from home to take care of her family became the foundation of an analytical commercial approach that defined the next two decades.

Maria learned the hard way to recognize when life was asking her to recalibrate. At 60, she recognized the pattern again. Some days she didn’t have time to walk a few steps to the ocean. Friends were dying. “This preemie baby that calibrated me 26 years ago flicked me again.” Gartner had recruited her at 55. She stayed five years, loved the work, but felt life passing her by again. She’d been canning jams as a stress break for decades. With ample corporate savings and business acumen, she quit Gartner and built JamSessionJams.

“I went from ruthless bitch to the sweet, little jelly girl,” she says. The transition humbled her. “I bitched a lot about my supply chain and procurement people in my DuPont days. I apologize to all of them because, in hilarious irony, now I’m those people.”

The lessons came fast. Small business requires every skill she’d honed in corporate life, just applied differently. The entire toolkit, pointed at different goals.

Building something sustainable

She just hired someone. The business is profitable, supplying Delaware retailers while sourcing from area farms. And she’s built “a growing cult following” for her candied hot-pepper product developed with a local partner.

Maria values “the sense of community, not competition, among other makers.” She helps other businesses with merchandising, pricing, and marketing. “There are other people in this area who make wonderful jams. I wish them the best.”

She’s building something sustainable that serves her life, not the other way around. Big orders that would add 15 to 20 hours get scrutinized. “I will not grind people in the ground like I did in old jobs. We aren’t beholden to Wall Street here.”

But she also strongly advises “you don’t quit your job if you can’t live without the income.”

Redeployed, not retired

Since leaving Gartner, she’s turned down consulting opportunities she would have jumped at five years ago. “I’ve never thought I’d say the words, ‘You don’t have enough money.’ For the first time in a long time, I’ve got my life back. At 61 years old, I’m keeping it.”

She’s not retired. She’s redeployed. Same weapons. Different battlefield. Rules she gets to write. Advisory work and board seats still get the full ‘properly terrifying’ protocol. “I don’t have a problem being that on a corporate board. But I don’t want to be that as a business owner making jam.”

The business name comes from beach time with husband Ron and their Pandora Aerosmith station. But not while working in a commercial kitchen. Making jams requires total focus, like studying did when she placed out of three terms of calculus and three terms of chemistry at Drexel. The Jam Session is the beach, the music, the not having anywhere else to be.

Measuring what matters

When her youngest went to college, she felt overwhelming regret about missed moments. She confessed this to both sons a few years ago. They helped her see she’d been measuring against the wrong metrics. They remembered the homecoming game she flew in for, showing up unexpectedly when she was supposed to be in Beijing.

That recalibration changed what success meant. Not perfect attendance. Not being everything to everyone. Just being present for the moments that matter. It’s validated when she overhears her son Michael using terms she used to use. Her kids are her biggest source of pride, humility and calibration.

Her advice for someone 20 years younger: “Don’t let anybody tell you ‘you can’t.’ And try to be a little more present so life doesn’t calibrate you so harshly, because it will. Whatever it is you want from your life, you can’t put it off.” Use every skill you’ve built but point them at goals that serve your life, she says. Build community instead of competing. And, most importantly, know what enough looks like.

The company tagline is Love on a Spoon. Maria Boulden spent 45 years being “properly terrifying” before learning where and when to deploy that energy.