Meet Jessica
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:
- Everyone who dreamed about being something when they grew up.
- Everyone who didn’t know what they were doing and feared someone would figure it out.
- Everyone who has the Sunday blues.
- Everyone who feels overwhelmed by the unprecedented circumstances that never seem to end.
- Everyone who doubts work/life balance is possible.
- Everybody who works too much.
- Everyone who is trying to work more.
- And especially the leaders who care about the experience of those who work for them.
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