Built Through The Hard Things
By Kim Fickett
A story of resilience and purpose, Briget Solomon’s journey shows how perseverance through life’s challenges can shape a meaningful career, strong family values, and impactful leadership.
"Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring."
- St. Catherine of Siena
For Briget Solomon, this is a motto she believes wholeheartedly.
“If you’re going to achieve big things, you’re going to have to go through hard stuff and not be afraid of it and just push through,” the president and CEO of Goodwill of the Great Plains shares. “Leading a large organization is hard, being a parent is hard, having a 22-year marriage is hard, but what you get in the end is beautiful and remarkable because you can look back at all the things accomplished together.”
A native of Sioux City, Briget grew up in Morningside, on a cul-de-sac filled with wonderful neighbors, friends, and beautiful memories.
“We had the most amazing, active neighborhood filled with so many kids,” she recalls with a smile.
And active it was from afternoons filled with playing baseball or wiffleball in the backyard, to summer days rollerskating and riding their bikes, to leaving their young footprints on local landmarks like the Morningside Country Club and Graceland Park Cemetery.
“We would just roam around up there and be adventurous. It was a really typical childhood,” she reminisces.
While Briget loved her free time with friends, she too embodied a deep sense of grit and drive which led her to not only take on one job but two at the age of 14.
“I worked as a customer service person for the Explorers and JC Penney throughout high school,” she shares.
The Explorers gig especially holds many fond memories for Briget from hanging out with coworkers in the parking lot after work, getting to know one another, to getting to see the bands Chicago and the Beach Boys play Lewis and Clark Field.
As she went through high school at Bishop Heelan, Briget immersed herself in activities from playing flute in band, to working on the sound and light crew for the school’s theater productions, to being in the Mission Club, and Science Club.
While Briget holds many great memories from her high school days, one closest to her heart is when she found the love of her life.
“I met my husband, Jarrod, in high school through mutual friends. We met at the old ice skating rink at the auditorium. I remember I wasn’t super interested at first. We became really good friends, talked for about a year before officially starting to date, and I think that’s what cemented our relationship,” Briget says, noting that this year they have now been together for 30 years.
Wanting to stay close to home, Briget elected to attend Wayne State College to pursue a degree in food and nutrition with a minor in human resources. It was there Briget became engaged in campus life, becoming heavily involved in Theta Phi Alpha, Greek Council, Greeks Against Drugs and Alcohol Abuse, and serving as the President and State of Nebraska representative for the family and consumer science club’s chapter.
After graduating in 2003, her first job would lead her down her future career path completely by chance.
“I was following my degree path in nutrition working as a food service director trainee. By chance they had a contract renting Goodwill’s kitchen where I was able to work in this location and got to know the staff through that opportunity.”
It was at the end of her one-year contract with Lunchtime Solutions that Briget was faced with a choice - move away or stay in Sioux City. For Briget, the decision came easy.
“I chose to stay in Sioux City because I was getting ready to get married and wanted to stay home and in this area,” she recalls.
As luck would have it, Goodwill had a position open in payroll, and as one says - the rest is history.
“I feel like it filled that need to serve the community and as I got to know more about Goodwill and that it wasn’t just a retail store, but so much more, it really caught on for me that this is where I should be.”
In the first year starting down her new career path, Briget and Jarrod found out they were expecting their first child.
“Jarrod and I were super excited to become parents. That was our dream as soon as we got married was to start a family and so we did,” Briget smiles.
While becoming parents was the couple’s biggest blessing, it too was the biggest challenge.
“I ended up having our son, Joey, early. He was born at 28 ½ weeks so he was just a little peanut at 2 pounds 12 ounces,” she shares somberly.
It was during her pregnancy with Joey that Briget developed HELLP Syndrome, a life-threatening complication as result of preeclampsia.
“It started with high blood pressure and then that turned into preeclampsia and then HELLP Syndrome. Ultimately it’s where your body is not happy being pregnant so my systems started shutting down and I got really sick.”
With her blood pressure high, and her liver and pancreas failing, Briget experienced a seizure and needed multiple blood transfusions, and was rushed into the operating room for a C-section.
“It was really touch and go for a few days,” she shares. “Thankfully the outcome was good and our son is perfectly healthy and is now 6 foot 5 ½ inches tall and didn’t have any lasting effects. It’s pretty incredible and we are very fortunate.”
In fact, Briget’s first-ever Mother’s Day was atypical.
“I was getting discharged from the hospital and having to leave my baby in the NICU. That was also at the time when the NICU had visiting hours so we could only see him in the morning and at night. I owe a lot of how our whole life has transpired since that moment because it taught us about faith and to make sure to lean on one another and to rely on family for support.”
With the difficulty of Joey’s birth, Briget and Jarrod channeled everything into him and prioritized their little family above all else.
“Our world really is centered around how as a family we spend time together and making the best of those moments. We spent a lot of time outdoors. I got into fishing because of Joey, and we would go on a lot of outdoor adventures from hiking and fishing to simply enjoying nature.”
Briget says it’s important to me that Joey sees what it means to have a successful career.
“He was my motivation to do my best because if I was going to be away from him and be a working mom, I want to really shine and do some outstanding things and make a big impact,” she reflects.
One of those for her was earning her master’s degree in organizational leadership from the University of South Dakota in 2011.
“Joey would have been seven when I graduated so being able to do that and work full-time and parenting a young child was hard to do but amazing and I’m really proud that I was able to accomplish that and commit to that goal.”
A fascination for organizational leadership spurred Briget’s desire to dig into the topic.
“I already was fascinated by it and that’s why I went with that degree but it opened my world even broader with how to bring it back to an organization and make sure that leadership and culture is the number one priority,” she states.
As much as that topic piqued her interest, so too did that of strategic planning.
“I’m incredibly passionate about it. I think once you start defining where an organization is going to go that becomes real. Once you put it down on paper and start communicating it, that sets the path forward and it’s amazing what a team can accomplish once you have clear goals.”
It is with those aspirations in mind that Briget leads her team and her constituents at Goodwill. Goodwill of the Great Plains includes Briget overseeing locations throughout SD, southwest MN, northeast NE, and northwest Iowa based in Sioux City.
“I feel like I get to be the spectator in the background because it’s our employees, the people we serve who are doing it. It’s all about their grit and desire to do it and continue to grow.
I hope I’m a positive influence in that, but it’s all them. We’re very big about servant leadership and trying to make the work environment a place where people can grow,” Briget concludes.
More With Briget
As a child she loved poetry and had a piece printed in Harvest Magazine.
Her recent guilty pleasure is ice cream - especially Cookie Dough.
Briget completely stepped away from social media, with the exception of LinkedIn. “It feels really freeing. It wasn’t feeding my soul.”
She loves reading leadership books and is even part of the Vistage CEO Group, a community that curates and shares monthly recommendations. Briget says you can always find multiple books sitting on her desk and nightstand, and that is the topic.
Briget’s happy place is Brainerd, Minnesota. She has been visiting there since she was a child with her family and now takes her family there. “I feel totally happy and stress free there.”
For a while Briget was super obsessed with Scotcharoos. “It became how can we perfect the recipe and make them a bit more healthy,” she laughs. The result - Briget uses honey instead of corn syrup and fake sugar instead of brown sugar.