About
Engineer, operator, and founder of three ventures. From the projects in Elizabeth, NJ — building systems people use to save their own personal worlds.
I was five years old, growing up in the projects in Elizabeth, New Jersey, when I took apart our VCR just to see what was inside. Then I put it back together. It worked. That wasn’t the start of a career — it was the start of how I think.
“Everything is made of parts, parts can be understood, and what can be understood can be rebuilt.”
My uncle saw something in that and gave me a full A/V system — not a toy, the real thing. I never stopped taking things apart after that.
In college I built computers for fun. I also burned DVDs with uTorrent and Nero and sold them — which I mention not because I’m proud of the catalog, but because it taught me something school never did: find what people want, figure out how to deliver it, handle your own operations. I’ve been running supply chains since before I knew the word.
That’s the thread through everything I do. The ideas have always come from lived experience. I studied code, binary, the Harvard CS curriculum, international studies, and business — and that education refined my process. But the ideas come from a place the process could never imagine.
My career didn’t follow a clean line, because real ones rarely do.
At 19, I was working at Helzberg Diamonds — a Berkshire Hathaway company — when I was introduced to Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. They told me: whatever you invest in yourself, we’ll match it. I took them at their word, and I invested. And they kept theirs — I had a T. Rowe Price portfolio before I turned 21, built on that match.
The bigger day-to-day education came from my boss there, who taught me how to read a business: what trends mean, where value hides, what’s worth investing in. Those principles never left. I went looking for more of that thinking and found it in Ray Dalio’s principles and Jeffrey Sachs’ economics — one taught me how systems of money work, the other taught me who they’re supposed to work for. My mentors have always been heavy hitters; I just had to be ready to listen.
That second question pulled me into politics. I worked on both of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaigns, and that work taught me how systems move people — and how people move systems. Sales taught me how people actually make decisions.
My tech career started in 2016, when I came on as an advisor — and that advisory role got me appointed COO. From that seat, we acquired DesignPac Solutions: a business selling web development and design services, with all of our engineers based in India and Nepal. We basically did what the H-1B visa does without moving anyone. I eventually became CEO of DesignPac itself — the company we acquired, now mine to run. Leading a distributed engineering operation across continents taught me what breaks inside organizations — and that most businesses don’t fail from lack of vision.
“They fail from lack of infrastructure.”
Now I’m a founder several times over.
A Newark nonprofit fighting youth food insecurity by building modern distribution infrastructure for hunger relief.
Grocery technology that finds families the lowest local prices on the food they already plan to eat.
Everything learned forming entities, filing with the IRS, building websites, registering with SAM.gov, and standing up operations from nothing — put to work for founders who are where she's been.
I’ve registered the LLCs. I’ve filed the 1023-EZ. I’ve built the systems, written the bylaws, deployed the platforms, and navigated the government portals that seem designed to make you quit. When I tell you I can get your business formed, funded, and functional — it’s because I’ve done it for my own, more than once.
I’m not trying to save the world. No one person can. What I can do is build systems and tools people use to save their own personal worlds — and that’s not a smaller mission. It’s the only one that actually works.
“The money follows the problem, every time — never the other way around.”
Every engagement I take has to be something I believe in, and it has to connect to something larger. Your LLC isn’t just paperwork to me. It’s the legal foundation of somebody’s way out, somebody’s family wealth, somebody’s answer to a problem their community has been living with.
And I believe in readiness. Not waiting for opportunity — being ready when it arrives. That’s what I build for my clients: businesses that are ready before the moment comes.
New Jersey birthed me and shaped me. Washington, DC refined me. And the rest of the world made me a force to be reckoned with.
— Janelle Glanville, Founder, Leviora Ventures
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