Experience and Coaching Style

With over 15 years of experience, Jess has coached and managed dozens of professionals—from early career to executives—and influenced hundreds of staff in complex, matrixed organizations. As a certified executive coach, she sets high standards with clear expectations while providing support and accountability. Jess is passionate about strengths and habit change, helping clients build sustainable practices for long-term success.

Workforce Development and Research Background

Jess applies her professional and graduate background in research and evaluation to your strategic opportunities. She asks thoughtful questions and uses the latest research, along with both quantitative and qualitative data sources, to deeply assess and meet your needs.

Before coaching, Jess spent a decade leading research teams in the workforce development sector. Through that work, she developed deep knowledge of what it takes to:

• Build and maintain effective talent pipelines that ensure a steady flow of skilled workers
• Design key components of training programs that effectively prepare participants for the workforce
• Implement skills-first hiring practices that focus on practical skills over traditional credentials
• Effectively manage early career professionals to help them thrive and advance

Her experience has equipped her with nuanced understanding of workforce trends, skill development needs, and the organizational structures that support sustainable career advancement and employee retention.

Facilitative Leadership

Jess uses a facilitative leadership approach in both small and large settings, drawing on her experience facilitating a wide range of trainings, workshops, and meetings—from groups of 3 to 200 participants, in person and on Zoom. Examples include:

• Building team charters, values, and norms
• Annual and quarterly planning sessions
• Executive team alignment and strategy meetings
• Team retreats focused on team building and strategic orientation
• Clarifying team and individual roles and setting meaningful goals
• Data-driven decision-making workshops, including interpreting quantitative and qualitative data and turning insights into action
• Quarterly and annual board meetings
• Designing and facilitating focus groups and surveys
• Early career skills workshops covering networking, communication, teamwork, and more
• Workshops exploring personal identity at work and examining identity-based biases and power dynamics in program and project design

Lifelong Learner and Systems Thinker