I've spent 20 years learning to see
what leaders can't.
The closer you are to something, the harder it is to see it clearly. It's not just you. It's the nature of building something. "I built this thing, which also makes me the worst person to see what's broken."
I've never fit in one box.
It's just who I am.
I've always been drawn to the most complex systems I could find — and to the question underneath them: why do smart people, in well-intentioned systems, keep producing the same broken results?
The a-ha came when I was working with families in high-conflict situations. Divorce. Custody disputes. Cases where the stakes were someone's children and future. What I kept finding — and have never stopped finding since — is that the presenting problem is almost never the real problem. The structure around the people is. The unspoken rules. What everyone agrees on behind closed doors versus what actually happens in the hallway.
I carried that into organizational work — first at the Edward Lowe Foundation, designing and facilitating peer-learning retreats for founders and CEOs. That's where I learned what peer groups do that nothing else can: put leaders at the same table as people living the same problems, with no agenda other than to see more clearly. I believed in the model enough to lead one myself. I still do.
Along the way I sat inside family businesses where the succession conversation was also a family conversation — where the org chart and the dinner table were the same table. That kind of work requires a different kind of trust. You have to be inside both systems at once to be useful in either one.
The PsyD in Business & Organizational Leadership put rigor around what 20 years of closed doors had already taught me. The APA Council seat added a different dimension — I now vote on the direction of applied psychology as a field. It's not a résumé line. It's how I make sure I'm bringing the sharpest possible version of this work into every room.
Twenty years. Hundreds of closed doors. The question hasn't changed. Neither has the answer: you can't fix what you can't see from inside it. My job is to be the person who can see it — and stay until something actually shifts.
What working with me looks like —
and what it doesn't.
The work is specific. So is who it's for.
The short version of a long record.
20 years. Multiple disciplines. One through-line.
PsyD, Business & Organizational Leadership
Doctoral-level training in how organizations function and how people inside them behave — not just individually, but systemically.
APA Council Representative
Elected to represent Division 13 — Society of Consulting Psychology — on the American Psychological Association's Council of Representatives. 2025–2027.
Fellow, Strategic Doing Institute
Peer-selected fellowship in Strategic Doing — an agile methodology for navigating complex, networked challenges. Practitioner-certified and faculty-level.
Edward Lowe Foundation
Five years designing and facilitating peer-learning retreats for founders, leadership teams, and nonprofit executives at one of the country's premier entrepreneurial learning centers.
200+ Retreats & Strategy Sessions
Across industries — manufacturing, family business, nonprofit, healthcare, professional services, tech. The facilitation record is the credential.
Pixel Perspectives+ 360 Certified
Certified administrator of a multi-rater feedback tool that surfaces how leaders impact others — giving clients an outside view of what the people around them are already seeing.
"Dr. Jennings played a key role in creating and implementing our strategic plan and organizational alignment. Her ability to synthesize complex organizational dynamics into actionable strategy made a measurable difference in how we operate."
— Willy Veldman, President, Veldman's Inc.
I'm not a vendor.
I'm a thinking partner.
The work looks different depending on what you need. Sometimes it's a single session to get clarity on a decision that's been sitting too long. Sometimes it's a year of monthly calls that become the one place you can think out loud without consequences. Sometimes it's bringing me in to facilitate a group that's stopped being honest with each other.
What stays consistent: I don't soften what I find. I don't disappear when it gets hard. And I don't keep going past the point where I'm genuinely useful.
If that sounds like what you've been looking for, the 15-minute call is the right next step.
"Working with Dr. J gave me much-needed clarity on family business issues I'd been circling for months. She looked at the problem objectively in a way no one inside the situation could. I left with a real path forward."
— Jay Groninger
If this sounds like
what you've been looking for —
The 15-minute call is the right first step. Tell me what's happening. I'll tell you honestly whether I'm the right fit — and if I'm not, I'll point you toward who is.