Meet Jessica

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I am a coach, thought-partner, and strategist who has a passion for building great places to work.

I’ve spent 15+ years leading high-profile initiatives for c-suite leaders in higher education, non-profits, and foundations who want to create people-centric organizations. Most recently, I served as chief of staff to the president of Texas A&M, the largest public university in the country.

I combine that experience with evidence-based strategies, including positive psychology, behavior change, and mindfulness, to empower leaders in higher education to become more inspiring, impactful, and create work cultures that support courage, purpose, compassion, and wellbeing.

I’ve been there.

Unhappy, unhealthy, and overwhelmed by the demands of work. Struggling with the question of how to be okay – forget well and thriving. When the whole world wears busyness like a status symbol, it can be hard to understand the problem or where to start fixing it.

We will spend almost 90,000 hours of our lives at work, and nowhere more than at work do people struggle with the need to feel fulfilled. In mission-driven fields like higher education, you’re supposed to love everything you do and give it everything you have. It’s not a place where you are supposed to feel a meaningless cog in the educational industrial complex wheel, but too many staff and faculty have this experience too often. Working in higher education doesn’t need to be this way.

The work I do is about rehumanizing the higher education workplace for everyone:

“I always came away from our sessions feeling more confident and determined to be more mindful and thoughtful — not just reacting to the crisis of the day, but approaching moments in a more measured way.”
Assistant Vice President
Texas A&M University

I'm not a traditional academic or even a lifelong higher education administrator.

I fell into this industry, and it honestly felt like a terrible fit for a long time because all of my professional success outside of higher education depended almost entirely on mastery of soft skills: critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, and taking action.

And there is a serious lack of soft skills and action in higher education today.

Higher education needs to embrace soft skills as serious skills. And soft skills need to be cultivated – actively – if higher education wants to be a great place to work and successfully navigate the challenges it faces in this new century and post-industrial economy.

Campus wellbeing is at stake.

Staff and faculty retention is at stake.

The value proposition of higher education is at stake.

Higher education cannot afford not to do this work.

Soft skills are the change that higher education needs to stop doing business as usual. To make campuses more human.

My non-academic/outsider + administrator status gives me a unique perspective. If you are a leader in higher education who is ready to make being human at work priority, I can help.

I've worked with leaders, teams, and organizations at:

Columbia University

Boise State University

Flourish at Texas A&M University

Harvard University

Oregon State University

Seattle University

Texas A&M University

C.A.S.E

The Whole U

University of California, Berkeley

University of Washington

Check out my conversation on the
Mays MasterCast!

Ready to work together?