By Kendall Fisher, executive producer at Grow Wire


We’ve all been there: frantically calling a spouse, a parent, a close friend, a colleague or some expert we know to help us better understand our next set of health or financial benefit choices.

It’s something that’s so important to our well-being and to our bank accounts, and yet one in four people would rather clean a toilet than research benefits options (according to a recent Aflac survey).

And this is exactly the frustrating issue Jellyvision, under the leadership of CEO Amanda Lannert, set out to fix.

Jellyvision is, surprisingly, a former gaming company turned HR technology company. It makes software for large corporations to help employees choose their benefits with a little humor, a lot of math and zero frustration. Jellyvision calls this software “Alex,” a conversation simulator that asks questions, remembers answers and offers personalized guidance with a bit of personality and wit—you know, like you’d get from calling the person of your choice for help in picking benefits. Alex is not artificial intelligence, but rather an Interactive Conversation Interface (or iCi).

In 2018, nearly 18 million employees and $115 billion dollars’ worth of premium decisions were entrusted to Alex, which now works with hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies.

How does a gaming company transition into HR technology? And how did Jellyvision even come up with this software idea in the first place?

Worry not! On this episode of “The Grow Wire Podcast,” Lannert joins us to answer all of these questions and more, including a few about her leadership style—she won CEO of the year at the Moxie Awards several years in a row—as well as the time she had to write her own severance letter and the seven-and-a-half years Jellyvision stayed alive going sideways.

In other words, you won’t want to miss this one. Listen to the full podcast episode on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud and YouTube.