Jen Stine

JEN STINE, COLLABORATION ARCHITECT & LEADERSHIP COACH

A seasoned entrepreneurial leader, Jen Stine is a three-dimensional thinker with a flair for analysis, brainstorming and working with people. She thrives in situations where personalities, strategy and operations converge.

Jen’s background includes 25+ years working with Harvard University, Egon Zehnder, Root Capital and other esteemed corporate, academic, nonprofit and global institutions to build and lead innovation ecosystems.

Jen draws on her lifelong investigation into how communities successfully confront their hardest challenges to support clients navigating complex, messy situations. When describing Jen’s style, people highlight her enthusiasm, her insights, her integrity, and her “Jenergy.”

10 Powerful Learning Moments

10. Starting my own business.

9. Serving as Interim COO in a global organization during a period of rapid growth. 

8. Firing a key staff member. 

7. Listening to leaders tell stories about racism in our public schools during one memorable afternoon session at PELP. 

6. Working as a developmental editor with Linda Hill and her team on their award-winning book Collective Genius. 

5. Singing Monteverdi in St Mark's Basilica in Venice, Italy. 

4. Becoming a parent. (And then parenting during a pandemic.)

3. Writing a case-study about cross-cultural leadership in Wuhan, China at age 22. 

2. Attending the 2002 TED conference in Monterey, CA.

1. Painting a portrait of Neil Diamond as a Cheez-Ball.

Professional Biography

Jen Stine loves smart people, thorny problems and elegant solutions. You'll find her in boardrooms, on backroads or anywhere people are trying to make a difference. She partners with leaders and organizations seeking organizational structures to bring innovative ideas to life. A seasoned entrepreneurial leader, Jen Stine is a three-dimensional thinker with a flair for analysis, brainstorming and working with people. She thrives in situations where personalities, strategy and operations converge.

Her specialty is coaching “wicked smart” leaders (often founders) of dynamic organizations across the nonprofit and for-profit sectors seeking to build and lead innovation ecosystems. Clients typically face rapid growth, complex team dynamics, and/or new opportunities for leadership. Jen and her team help leaders (re)design teams and organizational structures, adopt authentic and effective behaviors, and/or embed best practices across the entire organization. Typical engagements resolve messy organizational dilemmas or bottlenecks, or accelerate collective progress via leadership development, succession preparation, strategic planning and improved collaboration. Jen is a generalist at heart, with deep expertise in education and leadership development.

Jen’s training includes over a decade of research and case writing at Harvard Business School where she developed two cutting-edge leadership programs seeking to bridge the gap between leadership scholarship and practice: the Leadership Initiative and the Public Education Leadership Project (PELP).  While at Harvard, Jen had the opportunity to write more than 20 case studies, including a three-year series describing the challenges of leading the Long Beach Unified School District, written while Jen was a founding member of the PELP research team.

As a Partner at Paradox Strategies from 2015-2019, Jen worked closely with HBS Professor Linda Hill and former Pixar CTO Greg Brandeau, to develop leaders of innovation. At Paradox, Jen and the team developed a proprietary assessment of organizational culture and capabilities (re:Route) based on Hill’s bestselling book: Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation. Jen also directed the analysis of innovation potential of over 50 organizations around the globe.

Jen herself holds leadership roles and knows from experience that leadership is easier said than done.  In addition to the partnership at Paradox, Jen served as Interim COO at Mobius Executive Leadership for nearly 2 years (2021-2022), which was truly an an honor. From 2008-2011, she directed organization planning and development for Root Capital, a nonprofit social investment fund, where she designed and managed both performance management and strategic planning as well as HR and IT. Jen has also led expeditions, recruited executives, launched new programs, cycled across the country, and coauthored the Saroga 360, a strengths-based assessment which evaluates seven core elements of nonprofit leadership.

Key milestones in Jen’s lifelong investigation into how successfully confront their hardest challenges include earning her B.A. in Religion at Williams College, a Master’s degree in Education from Bank Street College, and becoming certified as a team coach by faculty from the Georgetown University leadership coaching program. She has spent over twenty years studying and testing approaches to professional development and high performance on the job which included training as a Wilderness First Responder and leading teenagers on expeditions. When describing Jen’s style, people highlight her enthusiasm, her insights, her integrity, and her “Jenergy.” She is someone who jumps headfirst into uncertainty with curiosity, calm and six core values: respect, excellence, responsibility, caring, honesty and joy.

Memberships, Achievements & Certifications

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