Top Women in Finance 2010 – Jill Skogheim

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Food Services Inc. dba 5-8 Club

Education: B.A., business administration, DePauw University

Employment: President, Food Services Inc., dba 5-8 Club. She also has served as director of marketing and advertising, vice president and director of operations at the company.

As an economics major at DePauw University in Indiana, Jill Skogheim envisioned a career working for multinational corporations.

A management and entrepreneurship internship she served in 1998 at a small, Minneapolis-based restaurant company led to a change in plans for the Mendota, Minn., native.

After graduating in 2000, Skogheim joined the company, Food Services Inc., which now has three 5-8 restaurants (known as “Home of the Juicy Lucy”). Five years later, at age 28, Skogheim became president after the death of company founder James Emison III, a DePauw alumnus and her mentor.

As director of marketing and advertising, Skogheim had overseen the successful launch of the 5-8 Club’s second and third locations in Maplewood (2002) and Champlin (2004). In the process, she rose to vice president and director of operations of FSI.

Completing those restaurant projects, in spite of numerous delays attributed to red tape, taught her a vital lesson: “the importance of persistence.”

As a young woman, Skogheim occasionally has encountered erroneous assumptions that her success is nepotism-related. “In the restaurant industry, there is still a ‘good old boys’ club. But more and more women are making an imprint on the industry.”

Skogheim participates in civic and business organizations including the St. Paul Area Chamber’s Leadership St. Paul program, the Junior League, the Minnesota Restaurant Association and Junior Achievement. She enjoys mentoring lower-income middle school students through Minnesota’s Get Ready Program.

One message she strives to impart: “How important it is to do something you love. I see so many college students who want to go into a particular area to make money, or please their parents. But it’s the difference between something that is ‘just a job,’ and loving what you do.”

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