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Written by Noel Teter ’24
Published on September 01, 2025
The business empire of Jeff ’01 and Jessica Reinhart ’00 began with a call from an unlikely thought leader: their 14-year-old niece, Bella, who lived in Arizona. Bella had started a small business selling customized jewelry to help save money to buy a car for her 16th birthday.
“She was selling these lockets that people seemed to like,” said Jeff. “She asked if we wanted to come out and start a business with her.”
Given that the Reinharts were then living in Connecticut with their two young children, flying to the Southwest to start a business with their teenage niece didn’t seem like the safest bet. “We were pretty rooted in Connecticut,” said Jessica.
And yet, they decided to take the leap of faith. “Each of us separately felt the same thing, and then we came together with this crazy idea to move, and it ended up being the best possible thing,” said Jessica.
This “best possible thing” was Origami Owl, an expansion of Bella’s customized jewelry business. What was once a teenager’s lucrative hobby became a rapidly growing direct sales company, with Jeff and Jessica serving as co-founders.
“At the end of one year, we had 250 employees,” said Jeff, who also served as Origami Owl’s chief operating officer. “At the end of two years, we had 700 employees.”
The Reinharts left Origami Owl after the birth of their third child, but the company is still active to this day. This was just the beginning for the Reinharts: “We’re serial entrepreneurs,” said Jessica.
We came together with this crazy idea to move, and it ended up being the best possible thing.
Jessica Reinhart
Today, their main enterprise is Jessica’s brainchild, Lumitory, which creates and sells conversation cards intended to strengthen interpersonal relationships. Jessica has served as Lumitory’s founder and CEO since its inception in 2016.
Lumitory cards are sold by hundreds of retailers across the country, according to Jessica, including at Nordstrom stores nationwide starting in fall 2025. They were even featured on The Today Show last December, and starting this summer, their products are sold at Magnolia Market in Waco, TX, a venture by celebrity entrepreneurs Chip and Joanna Gaines.
The Reinharts’ businesses cover a wide range of interest areas, including business development itself. They founded Thinkful Inc. in 2014, which is a business incubator/accelerator focused on providing strategic guidance and investment in up-and-coming startups.
Additionally, the pair created Startup Club for Kids, a faith-based entrepreneurship program that teaches elementary and middle grade students how to launch their own business.
Jeff and Jessica continue to invest in and provide strategic mentorship to businesses. They recently partnered with Arizona-based PipShip Fulfillment, a rapidly growing shipping/fulfillment company for hundreds of e-commerce companies.
“We’re able to go back to our Origami Owl days of building warehouses and helping them out,” said Jeff, who is also in the pre-launch stage for Renegade Hockey Gear, a company selling youth hockey gear and apparel.
Everybody wants to grow in a company... The goal is to make each other better.
Jeff Reinhart
Having met at Eastern while living in neighboring houses on Walnut Street during their senior year, the Reinharts feel that Eastern prepared them for life in and out of the workplace.
“I didn’t focus on business at Eastern, so that became a passion post-college,” said Jessica, who majored in English. “Things that I took away from my time at Eastern were much more about how to navigate the real world.”
She continued: “To me, as much as [college] is about the academics, it really is about the life that you live there and a sense of freedom, but in a safe zone surrounded by people who truly do have your best interest at heart. I think that is, for us, one of the biggest things that impacted our adult life as well as giving us that strong foundation so that we could launch into the world.”
Jeff, meanwhile, majored in sport and leisure management and is an Eastern Athletics Hall of Famer for his performance on the men’s lacrosse team. The program’s illustrious first head coach, Rick McCarthy, coached Jeff’s cohort and realized the team’s chemistry was special.
“[McCarthy] said, ‘You’re going to look back years from now and see how much of a bond you had,’” recalled Jeff. “He was totally right. Everyone is still talking. … If you needed help, you could reach out to any of the players now and they would come right over and help out.”
Jeff also applies this lesson in team chemistry to his businesses. “Everybody wants to grow in a company, and I think it’s our job to help everyone that works for us — just like with [my former teammates]. The goal is to make each other better."