Jim McKelvey
Nicki McGuire Irish Eyes Photography
It’s a strange thing to say, but for a long time, Jim McKelvey – co-founder of Square and now the chairman of the St. Louis Federal Reserve — felt like his career was a “dumpster fire.”
He’d written engineering textbooks in college, started successful companies, including a digital publishing firm and a manufacturer of CD storage cabinets, in his home city of St. Louis. He made a living as an artist – a glassblower. Then, he founded Square in 2009 with Jack Dorsey, also from St. Louis, who’d worked for him as a teenager. But when McKelvey looked back at his career, there was plenty of success, but not much of a trajectory. And sometimes, he flailed around as a manager. He didn’t even stick around in an operations role at Square past 2010, though he’s still on the board.
“Career has all these connotations,” he told me in an…
