In the late 1980s, Usenet was still popular, the World Wide Web wasn’t yet available to the public, and Shelley Hunter was in an information management class where she heard her professor say, “Five years out from your degree, you won’t be doing anything you think you’re going to be doing.” The professor was likely referencing how technological advancements would transform the information management industry. But in Hunter’s case, the shift would come later and from a different source.
Ever since her father had brought home a personal computer that stretched across their family’s six-foot table, Hunter had been enthralled by computers. She tried studying computer science at BYU before her love for business led her to switch to the information management program at BYU Marriott, where she could take courses on marketing and finance while learning to program. Hunter graduated in 1990 and worked at Bank of America and then Chevron, just as she had planned.
The next part of her plan was to continue working as she raised her family, but after giving birth to a daughter, things changed abruptly. “My priorities completely shifted in basically a weekend,” she says. “I didn’t care about being on a career ladder for the time being.” So Hunter worked remotely at Chevron until her second child was born, and then she began pursuing less- demanding career opportunities. After working as a writer, entrepreneur, and designer, Hunter finally found her niche. And as her professor predicted, it wasn’t anything she’d ever imagined doing.
“I realized the thing that I really like, not unlike what I did with computers, is solving problems,” she explains. “What’s the problem you’re faced with? I can come up with a solution for that.”
One problem she found is that she loved giving gift cards as presents but disliked how gift cards can be seen as less personal than other gifts. None of her ideas—including pairing cards with cardholders, candy, or flowers— seemed to fix the problem. A breakthrough came when Hunter realized that the most important aspect of giving gift cards is the “philosophy of picking the right gift card and packaging it, delivering it, and sometimes using the right words,” she says. “It’s seeing it as a gift and treating it that way.”
Hunter used her consumer experience and launched Gift Card Girlfriend in 2009. From Gift Card Girlfriend’s online and social media presence, Hunter shared tips on topics such as selecting the perfect gift cards, avoiding gift card fraud, and finding a use for unwanted gift cards. Her site slowly gained a following until it was acquired by and moved to GiftCards.com, where Hunter continues to publish her gift-card insights as Gift Card Girlfriend. “I relish the role of being the consumer guide to gift cards, where I can help people navigate this new financial instrument and way of giving,” Hunter says.
Surprisingly to Hunter, her many previous side gigs had a direct impact on her ability to develop the Gift Card Girlfriend brand and then be part of a growing company. “It was clear that I had been laying the foundation all along,” she says.
Throughout her journey, Hunter prioritized her three children above all else as she worked diligently from home. She and her children recently moved from the San Francisco Bay area to Idaho, where Hunter enjoys living near family. She never planned on living in the Gem State and its colder- than-California weather. “People laughed when I bought a snowblower the first time it snowed,” she remembers. “I know we are where we belong.”
