Jen O’Ryan, PhD
PHILOSOPHY STATEMENT
A trusted guide in a changing landscape. Specializing in Human and Organizational Behavior.
Dr. Jen O’Ryan is a Change Management Leader and Digital Transformation Executive with 20 years’ experience driving continuous improvement. Trusted advisor to senior leadership with a track record of developing high-performing teams, her background includes designing new experiences for customers, transforming enterprise-wide workflows, and making order out of chaos.
Blending humor, storytelling, and evidence-based methods, Jen’s approach is to meet people where they are and show them a way forward. She is also the author of two books on building inclusive organizations, sustainable culture change, and bringing others along on the journey.
Areas of specialization
- Leading and managing change
- Retreat and meeting facilitation
- Workplace culture and community
- Workshops and small group learning
- Project management and implementation
- Strategic planning and communication
- Process improvement and design
- Creativity and innovation
Facilitation, Workshops, and Learning
- Navigating emotionally charged change or conversations (policies, reorganizations, restructuring)
- Facilitation for leadership retreats, planning sessions, and strategy development
- Workshops and interactive learning sessions (coping and resiliency, psychological safety in the workplace, reclaiming toxic teams)
Change Management
- Individual strategy sessions and small group work (managing change fatigue and overwhelm, leading teams during uncertainty)
- Communication development, audience mapping, and organizational storytelling
- Organizational health and employee engagement research (surveys, interviews, focus groups)
- Strategic design through implementation and post-launch evaluation
Content development and expert review
- Review content (policy, messaging, textbooks, course materials) for bias, stereotypes, inequities, ableism, absences, stigma, appropriation, and similar issues
- Humanizing interactions and experiences
- User experience mapping and workflow analysis / optimization
Select Projects and Achievements
- Designed and implemented an expansion strategy that increased a client’s internal processing capacity by 58%, significantly improving data quality and update frequency.
- Enhanced alert timing by analyzing abandonment points and user friction, resulting in improved engagement.
- Specialized in supporting transformations by combining facilitation, strategy development, and people-centered design. Led organizational initiatives addressing employee overwhelm and stalled adoption efforts.
- Designed and implemented cross-functional processes to reduce delivery inconsistencies, improving client experience and cutting internal rework hours by 26%.
- Optimized support workflows, significantly reducing client ticket resolution time from 78 to 28 days, leading to measurable cost savings.
- Developed and rolled out a cross-organizational communication strategy, increasing internal accountability and strengthening client trust. Leveraged data visualization and threshold modeling to eliminate excess “noise.”
Credentials
- 20 years leading enterprise-wide initiatives (domestic and international), designing data collection and analysis, driving product and feature development through release (including Microsoft, Amazon)
- Author of two books on the subject:
- PhD – Human Behavior, Capella University
- MBA – University of Phoenix
- BA – University of Washington
Selected Clients
- Washington Board of Pilotage Commissioners
- Puget Sound Pilots
- Jennifer Brown (Jennifer Brown Consulting)
- Larson Textbooks (Math, K-12)
- WellSpring EAP