Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Jodi Goldstein , managing director of the Harvard Innovation Labs. To read the complete interview, check out other articles, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Photo credit: Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Tell me about your early years.

I grew up in Mount Snow, a very small ski town in Vermont. My childhood was unconventional. My parents owned a hotel and restaurant. They worked all the time, and so I had a lot of independence at a young age.

But my parents were incredibly supportive, and they were amazing role models because of their work ethic. They had an unbelievable ability to challenge convention and follow their passion. They started from nothing and built a successful business.

I was quite a tomboy. There were all these things I wanted to do that I wasn’t allowed to do. I remember my mom going to the school board and saying, “My daughter wants to take shop. She doesn’t want to take home ec. Make that happen.” The shop teacher hated me, and I didn’t care. I had a blast. So just because someone tells you no, that doesn’t mean no. Let’s figure out a way.

How did your family end up in a ski town?

Before we moved to Vermont, my dad was in the corporate world. When I was very young, we got transferred to rural Georgia. About three weeks after we moved there, there was this big bonfire in our yard. It was the Ku Klux Klan demonstrating. We were the only Jews in a very Southern place.

My dad had just gotten this new promotion, but my parents said, “We’re out of here.” They literally sold and mortgaged everything they had and moved to Vermont with two very small children. That taught me to take risks, to trust your gut.

Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do for your career when you went to college?

I majored in international business, because I wanted to study abroad. I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I did want to learn as much as I could in the shortest amount of time. After working for G.E. for three years, this thought kept going through my head around entrepreneurship, but I didn’t really know what that meant.

I didn’t have an idea to start a company, but the opportunity came along to work in the venture capital industry. I thought, “What a perfect way to learn about entrepreneurship, but from the other side.” I got to meet founders and C.E.O.s and talk to them about their businesses and their ideas and help them.

I realized I’d be better suited on the other side of the fence with the entrepreneurs. I spent almost 20 years in various early-stage start-ups. For a while I thought I had attention problems because I couldn’t stay at any one job too long. Then I realized I really like early-stage companies, with up to about 20 employees. That’s my sweet spot.

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To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.

Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times’ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews of hundreds of business leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.