Tere Stouffer, Chief Marketing Officer, JA Worldwide
For more than a decade, Tere Stouffer has helped shape the global brand, voice, and visibility of JA Worldwide. As Chief Marketing Officer, she leads the organization's worldwide marketing, communications, thought leadership, and brand strategy across more than 120 countries, helping position JA as a leading global voice on youth entrepreneurship, work readiness, financial capability, and the future of education. During her tenure, JA has expanded its reach to more than 23 million youth annually, earned a place among the world's Top 10 NGOs for multiple consecutive years, received repeated nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize, and significantly elevated its global influence among corporate, government, and multilateral partners.
Tere believes that great marketing does more than build awareness: It builds trust, inspires action, attracts partners, and creates opportunities for young people whose potential might otherwise remain unseen. That philosophy has guided initiatives ranging from global thought-leadership platforms, youth-advocacy efforts, and international campaigns to the organization's long-term brand strategy, all designed to help JA achieve its aspiration of reaching 100 million young people per year by 2050.
Born in Brazil and raised in the United States, Tere has spent her career bringing together disciplines that rarely share the same résumé. She began as the first female engineer hired by Alps Electric, later moving into management consulting, where she specialized in automation, human factors, and user experience (UX). Those experiences instilled a systems-oriented approach to solving complex problems, one that pays dividends in an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and rapid organizational change.
Her fascination with how people absorb ideas led Tere to earn additional degrees in literature and creative writing, and then join the iconic For Dummies series, spending the next decade editing more than 150 trade books while authoring or co-authoring more than 20 of her own. Her work has appeared through each of the major U.S. publishing houses and spans topics as diverse as personal finance, travel, fitness, and popular culture. The experience sharpened a skill that has become central to her marketing approach: translating complex ideas into stories that people relate to and act on.
Before joining JA Worldwide, Tere served in leadership roles at Girl Scouts of the USA, where she helped pioneer branded social media and digital storytelling long before they became standard practice. Her work earned national recognition, including Grand Champion at the inaugural Wharton/Ernst & Young “Social-Media Leadership Award” and the AdWeek/Parham Santana “Best Brand Extension of the Year.”
Today, Tere speaks about branding, communications, women in leadership, the future of work, and youth advocacy. She has addressed audiences ranging from corporate leaders and nonprofit executives to educators and policymakers, always returning to the same conviction: that the world's smartest investment is to empower young people with the skills, confidence, and opportunities to succeed.
A former NCAA full-scholarship athlete and team captain at the University of Tennessee, Tere later became an elite-level marathoner and continues to believe that endurance, teamwork, curiosity, and optimism are among the most valuable qualities any leader can cultivate. She resides in Michigan (USA).