Inside Shive-Hattery's Leadership Development Program | Jennifer Bennett of Shive-Hattery

Jennifer Bennett didn't think she had what it took to be a leader. As a structural engineer coming up at Shive-Hattery, she assumed leadership required a natural charisma she didn't have. In 2007 she was invited to participate in the firm's Leadership Development Program and changed her mind. Today she's President and CEO of the 750-person, 18-office architecture and engineering firm, and she runs the program herself.

In this episode of the Smarter by Design podcast, Jennifer takes us inside how Shive-Hattery’s Leadership Development Program actually works: the cohort structure, the Socratic teaching method, the five curriculum pillars (business acumen, negotiation, high-performance teams, culture and values, emotional and social competence), and the real strategic projects each cohort tackles over their 15-18 months together. She also shares how she builds the trust a cohort needs to succeed and how the program itself is evolving as she brings her executive team in to teach modules so the firm can double how many future leaders it reaches each year.

At its core, Shive-Hattery’s Leadership Development Program isn't just about developing individual leaders — it's about teaching people to lead change in a way that's consistent with Shive-Hattery's culture and to carry that culture forward as they rise. That's part of a bigger act of stewardship. Shive-Hattery is a firm with more than 125 years of history and Jennifer sees investing in future leaders as central to how the firm sustains, evolves, and grows for decades to come. Past leaders invested in her generation; now it's her generation’s turn to pay forward.

If you lead an AEC firm or are thinking about what it takes to build a leadership culture and an enduring firm, this episode is for you.

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📃 Episode Transcript

This transcript was lightly edited for clarity.

Chris: Hello, and welcome to the Smarter by Design podcast. I'm your host, Christopher Parsons, founder and CEO of Knowledge Architecture. Our guest today is Jennifer Bennett, President and CEO of Shive-Hattery. And our topic is going deep inside Shive-Hattery's leadership development program.

So here's what I find interesting about Jennifer: she didn't think she actually had what it took to be a leader. As a structural engineer coming up at Shive-Hattery, she assumed that leadership required a natural charisma that she didn't have. But in 2007, she was invited to participate in the firm's leadership development program, and that changed her mind. So today, she not only runs the leadership development program, she leads the firm.

In this episode, Jennifer takes us inside how Shive-Hattery's leadership development program actually works: its cohort structure, the way she uses the Socratic teaching method, the five curriculum pillars — including business and financial acumen, negotiation and high-performing teams, and culture and values, emotional and social competence — and the strategic capstone projects each cohort tackles over their 15 to 18 months together. She shares how she builds the trust a cohort needs to succeed, and how the program is evolving as she brings her executive team in to teach some of the modules, so the firm can double how many future leaders it reaches each year.

At its core, Shive-Hattery's leadership development program isn't just about developing individual leaders. It's about teaching people to lead change in a way that's consistent with Shive-Hattery's culture, and to carry that culture forward as they rise through the firm. That's the bigger act of stewardship she talks about.

Shive-Hattery is a firm with more than 125 years of history, and Jennifer sees investing in future leaders as central to how the firm sustains, evolves, and will grow for decades to come. Past leaders invested in her generation; now it's her generation's turn to pay it forward.

So if you lead an AEC firm, or are thinking about what it takes to build a leadership culture and an enduring firm, this episode's for you.

Okay, so Jennifer Bennett, President and CEO at Shive-Hattery, on Inside Shive-Hattery's Leadership Development Program.

Here we go.

Chris: You are Jen Bennett, President and CEO of Shive-Hattery. It's an architecture and engineering firm with over 700 people across 18 offices. You've led the firm since 2020. And the thing I've noticed is that you're doing something very few CEOs in our industry are doing — or maybe any industry — you're personally running your firm's leadership development program. That's what I want to dig into today. But before we get there, for folks who aren't familiar with Shive-Hattery, how would you describe the firm? The work, the culture — if you were talking about Shive-Hattery at a barbecue, how would you tell people about it?

Jennifer: Sure. All right, well, 50,000-foot, high-level overview: as you said, we're around 700 people, 18 offices across the Midwest. We actually started in 1895 as a single-person civil engineering firm here in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and have grown. We grew mostly as an engineering firm for most of our first hundred years, added architecture in the '80s, and now today we consider ourselves big A, big E. We're about half architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, and half mechanical, electrical, structural, civil, land surveying — so a pretty good, well-balanced, integrated firm.

We started and grew in the Midwest, and over the last five years have been diversifying into different geographical markets, from five or six offices to 18. We work in a variety of different markets, primarily concentrated in commercial, industrial, public infrastructure, public buildings, and higher ed and healthcare.

Chris: How long have you been with the firm?

Jennifer: I started at Shive-Hattery in 2003 as a structural engineer. That was my plan, that was my growth path. I really loved my clients, taking care of my clients, taking care of their projects, and had joined the firm knowing this is a place where I could do that, and do that with some autonomy. That's when I started.

Chris: How did you get from a structural engineer who just wanted to take care of clients and design projects to being president and CEO?

Jennifer: I think, honestly, fairly reluctantly. What we call people leadership, positional authority leadership, was not something I originally thought — number one, I'd be good at; number two, I had the patience for; and number three, really didn't see as something I would enjoy doing. That first turn from individual contributor to really leading a small group of people happened within a few years of me getting here. I did that very reluctantly, almost voluntold — we don't do that anymore. But I'm very achievement-oriented, and I threw myself into it, thinking, I am not going to fail at this.

At that point I participated in our leadership development program, run by our president at the time — it was two presidents ago — and threw myself into really growing. What I found was that I really loved helping people develop, and that the impact could be far greater multiplied that way. So that was my leadership journey — it started there, I think. Each position I've approached since then, a little less reluctantly but more planfully.

Chris: So there's so much there. It sounds like the language you're using — from individual contributor to people manager — sounds like it's coming from a leadership pipeline book, is that right?

Jennifer: Yes, yes, we do use that one.

Chris: We'll get there later. Okay, that sounds familiar to me. When you got voluntold that you were going to move away from being an individual contributor, what was the part you didn't think you'd be good at, or didn't want to do — and how did you get convinced that wasn't true? Or are you still feeling nervous about whatever that was?

Jennifer: No, that's a great question. I think our leadership development program really opened my eyes. I came into leadership thinking you need a certain level of charisma and influence, and I really saw my role as more of a boots-on-the-ground partnership, relationship role with our clients. Our LDP — I'm going to call it LDP for brevity — really helped open my eyes to that.

Chris: Is what you're saying — there was a model of what a leader looks like in your head, and you didn't feel like you matched that?

Jennifer: Yeah.

Chris: Yeah.

Jennifer: I really prioritize quality of life and really enjoyed the role I had. So there was probably a little bit of, do I want to do something I'm not sure I'm going to be good at, and mess up a good thing here. A little personal growth.

Chris: So some of it was, am I charismatic enough — do I have that “natural-born leader” thing? But then also, do I want to work as hard, or give away as much of my life to work, as it seems like I'd have to as a leader?

Jennifer: Yes — to something that's more unknown. It's a personal risk-taking endeavor, right?

Chris: So I'm inferring that you now believe there are different types of people who can lead, with different styles. And do you still have a personal life? A balance, as a leader?

Jennifer: I do. I do.

Chris: Let's talk about different types of people who can be leaders. How did that door get opened for you? Did you meet someone through the program who led in a different way? Did you read about something? How did you start figuring out you could have a different style than the one that had been in your head going in?

Jennifer: I think it was the idea — and we'll talk about this as the program goes on — of emotional competence, emotional intelligence. Very eye-opening for me. Just the understanding that leadership, good leadership, can be learned — that it's a journey we can all decide to go on. It isn't some natural, innate ability that some are born with and some are not. If the heart and mind are willing, good leadership can be learned.

Chris: What is good leadership?

Jennifer: Oh. (chuckles)

Chris: Sorry, we're not going to warm up at all — we're just going to get right into it.

Jennifer: Oh, I think it's complex. Our emotional competency, emotional intelligence journey is a great part of being a great leader — learning to really listen, and, at least in our culture here at Shive-Hattery, to lead through strong relationship building. That's primarily the method we use. Yes, there are many different leadership styles. I think one of the things we need to learn in our leadership journey is how to keep however many leadership styles you subscribe to — Daniel Goleman, for example, uses six — all in your tool chest, and be able to pull them out. But I believe the one that works here, and in most professional service firms, is an affiliative, relationship-based leadership style that can be learned. It takes time. It takes a lot of one-on-one time.

Chris: Did you feel like you already had some of that, and just didn't realize it was a leadership building block — or did you have to really develop a bunch of new skills?

Jennifer: I believe that one is my natural leadership style, so it comes easy to me. Democratic — and sometimes pace-setting. I can use that one a little too often. It comes very naturally to me.

Chris: Wait, hold on — what does it mean to use pace-setting too often?

Jennifer: That's, let's get moving, let's drive, setting schedules, just keeping the pace of movement.

Chris: You mean if it's too fast for the firm's metabolism, or you haven't brought people along enough before you set a tempo?

Jennifer: Exactly that one. That's where I can err pretty easily.

Chris: What does it mean to lead a firm of 750 people that's big A, big E? What's uniquely hard about that, do you think?

Jennifer: I don't know that there's any difficulty, at least at this point, in leading a firm that's big A, big E. I think the challenge today comes through the fact that we're relatively fast-growing and expanding our locations. So the challenge today is connectivity — keeping a one-firm feel — and the travel required to do that effectively when we bring on, whether it's a completely new office or a firm by acquisition, and onboard them into our culture, helping them feel very soon that it's “us” and “we,” not “us and them.”

Chris: Yeah.

Jennifer: So that's a big challenge.

Chris: I'm glad — okay, that's great. Let's use that context. Thank you for diving right in. As a way to talk about the leadership development program, maybe we can start with how it works today. What is this thing you've been doing?

Jennifer: Okay, so our leadership development program — I'll go over the mechanics of it. It's a 15- to 18-month-long program. We meet quarterly, and today I lead every session. We meet quarterly in one of our offices — we rotate around our offices, and try to pick offices the cohort is in, so at least one person doesn't have to travel during that session. We meet for two days at a time.

In advance, we read two to three books ahead of the session. I send out some questions a month or two before we meet — just thought-provoking questions we use during our time together as a framework for discussion. Then we'll discuss the books we read and how they apply to Shive-Hattery — things we aren't doing that maybe the author suggests. Some of the books are thought leadership pieces, which are great: pick up a thought, chew it up together, examine it from every perspective, decide what fits and what doesn't fit for us, and move on. It's a very effective way I've found to really look at our culture of leadership, which is really what ends up being the culture of the firm. It's a great way to preserve and drive your firm culture.

Chris: This is 10 to 12 people per cohort, something like that?

Jennifer: It's 10 to 12 people per cohort, yes. And I've been running, recently, three cohorts at a time since we meet quarterly — it's one meeting per month for me.

Chris: Yeah.

Jennifer: So I can get three cohorts going, which gets, you know, 30 people. Two days a month, plus reading time and plenty of time thinking.

Chris: Are we talking about you, or the cohort members?

Jennifer: Me — hopefully both.

Chris: Hopefully both, right. So for two days, you talk about books?

Jennifer: Yeah, talk about the books and how they apply, talk about Shive-Hattery, and it ends up being a discussion.

Chris: So if it's three books, you'll do book one in the morning, book two in the afternoon, and day two—

Jennifer: Yes.

Chris: Do you do that all as a large group, or break into small groups? How do you navigate that?

Jennifer: We do not break into small groups — I will say we have begun to. Our past president introduced a leadership project that the class would work on together and present at the end of the class to a board, which was our president. Today, we do a class project together. They get it on their first meeting day and present it on their last meeting day. It's usually something out of our strategic plan — a real-life issue at Shive-Hattery — and we want them to apply what they're learning, and present, as if they were the CEO, how they'd solve it, to our senior leadership team. Our past president would use a Harvard Business-type case study, which was also very effective, but we've got all these great minds in the room — why not work on one of our own internal issues?

Chris: So you can have three of those projects going concurrently.

Jennifer: Yep. And they do break into small groups sometimes, working on that project on the side — but for our two days together, no, it's all together.

Chris: Are they working on that project outside of the quarterly meetings too?

Jennifer: Yeah.

Chris: So how do you start? What does meeting one look like?

Jennifer: Okay, so meeting one starts with the history of the program — why we do it, why it's important to Shive-Hattery. We talk about management versus leadership. This is not a management program. This is not a program on how we run the firm, or on measuring our KPIs and pushing on a number to get a result we want. It's really about leadership — how to create and lead change at any level in our organization.

This is not a program for only people with positional authority. People in our leadership program come from all walks — they may start and finish their career here as client leaders or technical experts, or people with positional authority. We don't value one type of leadership hat over another at Shive-Hattery; we need them all to be healthy and resilient. So that's what we do — we teach how to effectively lead change in our organization while preserving our culture.

We talk about why they were chosen for the class, and there's a promise: by agreeing to participate, you have to prepare, prepare, prepare. Read or listen to your reading assignments. Think about the questions. Come prepared to discuss. This isn't you coming to listen to Jen talk for two days — I actually do very little talking. I ask questions, and if they start to go off, I'll ask another question. It really is teaching through the Socratic method, and it works really well. People prepare and read, then come together to discuss what they're reading with some guiding questions. It's just a really powerful way to discover and grow.

Chris: Have you given them questions to think about how to apply that reading to Shive-Hattery in advance?

Jennifer: Yes.

Chris: Okay.

Jennifer: The questions are really tailored to, okay, this person said this — do you agree? If so, how does it apply to Shive-Hattery? That kind of flavor, really tailored around our firm.

Chris: Can we get an example of a book you've taught multiple times, and the kind of questions you might ask them to think about?

Jennifer: Day one, we almost always read The Advantage for session one.

Chris: The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni, yes.

Jennifer: He has a concept in there — he introduces the “first team” concept. First team applies to multiple levels of the organization. It's the idea that your first team is the team you're on, not the one you lead. To really have a healthy organization, your alignment and loyalty need to be to the team you're on. We cannot have leadership teams that come together, discuss something as a leadership team, and then go back to their individual teams and say, “This is what we discussed as a leadership team, but we're going to do this instead,” or have some other message.

One of the rules for participation on that team is an agreement that, hey, we might disagree — we're going to get that out on the table, and eventually we need to align around a decision. Even if we're still in disagreement, we're going to align as a team. That's one where I might ask, what's the first team? Who's the first team at Shive-Hattery? Often I'll get, “Well, that's our senior leadership team.” Then we're able to talk about their individual roles and the teams they're on, and what that means in their role.

Chris: So if I'm the marketing director, for example, my first team is—

Jennifer: The team I lead, right?

Chris: The team you lead, right. And so my fidelity has to be to that leadership team, so that when I go back to marketing, they're hearing the same messages that HR is hearing and that IT is hearing.

Jennifer: Yes. And we're not building silos in our own team. Does that make sense?

Chris: It does.

Jennifer: It's been really important for us as we grow. But that's one example that takes an idea that's easy to visualize at the top of an organization, and takes a little effort to get down into how it applies to me, in my role, as a leadership development program participant.

Chris: What are the kinds of things people learn about the company through this program that they didn't know coming in? The way you described it, people are coming from all different levels and teams within the organization — what does this do for them in terms of helping them learn how Shive-Hattery operates?

Jennifer: I'm going to do a deep dive into our culture here. This was my third firm. When I came here, there was a noticeable difference in how we lead — the autonomy provided to our staff to make their own decisions, to create their own career path. It can be a bit of a culture shock for somebody coming from a top-down organization, or one that puts an ultimate value on people who bring in work. This is a very different culture here.

It was quietly, over a period of time in LDP, that eventually I thought, I get it — I connected.

Chris: Through taking LDP, or through teaching it?

Jennifer: When I took it, in 2007.

Chris: When you took it, yeah.

Jennifer: I'd been here four years and knew enough to know this is different. I wasn't sure it impacted me very much, because I was off doing my own thing. But it was different, and I didn't understand it until I made the connection through time in LDP — I get it now, I get the culture, and I get why this is important to the long-term health of our company, and why this is a great place to grow my career. Prior to that, this was probably more a career/job — give and take.

Chris: You didn't know this was your forever home at that point.

Jennifer: Yes, yes. This is it, and this is why we are the way we are, and why we do things a little differently. It all started clicking into place. So it's maybe a little hard to understand, but that was the big lightbulb moment for me.

Chris: Do you feel like, once you had that lightbulb moment — it took you four years to get to that insight. Do you think you could get other people to that lightbulb moment faster, without going through LDP? Or does it take this kind of deep immersion with potential leaders to get there?

Jennifer: I'll answer that two ways. I think it's easier to onboard a brand-new grad — someone who's never been in a professional service firm workplace — and have them get it, than it is for somebody like me, who'd spent time in two other firms with very different, but similar-to-each-other, cultures. I thought that's just how engineering firms run, and that's how you're successful at an engineering firm. I needed to relearn some of that, and I didn't quite understand why until the leadership development program.

So we do prioritize people coming in with some experience who are likely to be a leader somewhere in our organization — we'll put a priority on new acquisitions and getting them enough of that culture.

Chris: By prioritizing that, I'm assuming you mean getting them into a cohort as soon as you can.

Jennifer: Yes, yes.

Chris: I was going to ask about how cohort selection works. So we know there's a slight bias toward getting someone into the Shive-Hattery way as soon as possible if they've learned another way of doing things elsewhere. How else do you pick? How do you get to the 10 to 12?

Jennifer: They're nominated by their leaders to our leadership development program. A nomination goes in with a little bit about them — why they're nominated, where they're at — that's all from their leader. I can look at all the demographics, and then I get to really craft these cohorts. There's a little bit of art to it, a little bit of matchmaking. There's a little bit of grouping people who need time on similar things — maybe a group of brand-new positional authority leaders, people who've just made that first turn or will soon — and we'll spend more time on coaching, mentoring, one-on-ones.

So we craft those by role, and then I look for diversity — one of the things we look for is relationship building across the cohort. It's an incredibly powerful team that forms, and usually sticks together long after the class ends. So we try to build that from across the organization, different locations, but with similar-enough roles that we can gear the content to what they're doing or may do soon.

Chris: That makes sense. How far ahead do you plan your cohorts? What's your backlog look like? I'm assuming there are more nominations than slots.

Jennifer: Oh, there are. I start planning a new cohort about six months in advance, because I want the invitation to go out four or five months before we might start. It's a time commitment, and they have the ability to say no. I lay out the time commitment, and tell them not to participate if they really can't commit the time. Sometimes people take us up on that — usually one in every cohort will say, “I just had a new baby,” or “There's stuff going on with my clients, I can't pick this up now, please ask me later.” Nobody ever says no, not interested — but I do get “ask me again later, when I have more time.” So I like those invitations going out four or five months in advance, giving them a month or so to consider, then booking the first meeting time three months in advance. These are very busy people — it's a very difficult group to schedule if I get any closer than that.

Chris: Is there any responsibility on their end to apply and say why they want to do it? Or is it, “We picked you, here's the time commitment, are you in?” Is there any part of them closing you on the idea that they're a good candidate?

Jennifer: It goes both ways.

Chris: Yeah.

Jennifer: It goes both ways. I get asked about it all the time, and then I'll follow up with their leader and say, hey, is this a good candidate? Not now, wait a little bit, what do you want them to work on? So certainly people can ask, and I'll follow up on that. I can't, with 24 to 36 people going through every year—

Chris: Yeah.

Jennifer: —get everybody in.

Chris: Yep. The five topics — this is what I have in my notes, tell me if I've got it wrong: introduction to leadership, business acumen and financials, building high-performance teams, culture and values, and ESCI and crucial conversations. We touched on introduction to leadership a little. I'm interested in the business acumen and financials piece, because on one hand you said this isn't an operational program, but on the other hand there's a topic that's business acumen and financials. How does that fit in?

Jennifer: Sure. Our CFO joins us for half of this session — we're really blessed with an amazing CFO who's not just all about the numbers, but we do share financials pretty widely in our firm. He starts with, this is what our financial statements look like — you've probably seen these, either on a screen or in hard copy — and goes through what everything is. But really, it's not about “here's what our metrics are” and “here's how utilization impacts the firm.” It's about, okay, what do we do with this? What do we do as leaders with this information?

I'll use utilization as an easy example — I hope we're all moving away from hourly work, but it's such an easy one because it's really easy to manage: you get a report, you see utilization's off, you tell people they need to be more chargeable, and you'll get a short-term bump. You can manage that number and improve the metric. But you're not really solving the problem, and you're probably creating additional problems — making people feel like they're measured by numbers. What does a new grad think when you say, “You've got to get your utilization up,” when they have little control over their workload? So it's really about, okay, what should we do with that? How does this impact our long-term decision-making, rather than “I need to do better next month”?

And Jake just opens himself up for questions — it's really an “ask Jake anything,” and it gets into all kinds of things, like what we're looking for in our employee owners, our shareholders, how we reinvest our profits to reinforce culture and create longer-term resiliency. So beyond the mechanics of business and financials, it's really, okay, we have all this information — what should we do with it?

Chris: In order to lead change at Shive-Hattery while also preserving the long-term culture.

Jennifer: Yes.

Chris: But this is the money piece of that.

Jennifer: Yes, yes, exactly.

Chris: What books do you read as part of business acumen and financials?

Jennifer: Oh, there've been several. I'm test-driving another one right now — I can't think of the title, it's written by a CFO in an AE firm and I can't think of her name right now. We did read one called Financial Statements — I won't tell you who wrote it, because we dropped it from our curriculum, it's just very dry. Instead, we don't do a lot of reading for Jake's part — we do a lot of definitions, defining what we mean by GAAP, work in progress, the way we value our projects month to month. That kind of definition-type stuff, then we do Jake's session.

On business acumen we also get into negotiations, so we may read two books that are favorites: You Can Negotiate Anything and Getting to Yes. Both are really centered around relationships. In our industry, we're not negotiating with terrorists — we're negotiating with clients, with each other, with people we want to be in relationship with. So it gives us a perspective: let's make this about relationships and not about winning a position. We'll read one of those books — they both do a great job giving a lot to talk about.

Chris: What surprises people about the negotiation piece — the new people coming through the program?

Jennifer: I think people fear negotiations, maybe because what's taught out in the world today is more positional negotiating — that we must win, we must win our position. I think what's eye-opening is that this is just an extension of the relationships we already have — it's about finding a solution together, not winning our position. I'm not doing this justice right now, but I think that's the eye-opening part. It takes the fear out of, “I know how to talk to my client, I know how to talk to people I work with” — this is just a continuation of that conversation, not—

Chris: They may feel like they have to play hardball, win at all costs.

Jennifer: It kind of takes that off. Both books do a great job giving scenarios and techniques that make it a little easier. And it's eye-opening that we negotiate every day, when stakes are low and when stakes are high — every one of us negotiates.

Chris: At home, at the office.

Jennifer: Yes, yes — and it's something we can all work on and get better at.

Chris: When you went through LDP, was this part of your program too?

Jennifer: No, no.

Chris: Did you add it?

Jennifer: I did.

Chris: Why did you add it?

Jennifer: That came out of assessing our leadership pipeline every year to make sure it's healthy — okay, who do we think are our potential positional authority replacements, who might our next president or COO be, who might our next group leaders or studio leaders be — and then assessing their skills. Negotiation was one that came up quite frequently: “This person needs to focus more on negotiation.” We realized it was a gap in our leadership development program, so we added it.

Chris: So interesting. How do you know somebody needs to focus on negotiation? How does that show up?

Jennifer: If they don't push back on clients. If we see some not-great contracts start to pop up, with things in there that shouldn't be. Or you just get a sense, talking one-on-one with an employee, of how much pushback they're giving in negotiations day to day, or how comfortable they are talking to a client about something difficult.

Chris: They ask someone else to do it for them, instead of doing it themselves.

Jennifer: Yes.

Chris: That's so interesting. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what I just heard is: in your mind, we've got the future of the firm at all levels — a bench-depth chart of who's going to fill these roles over time — and their aggregate strengths and weaknesses. You bucket them into cohorts with similar struggles and challenges, and customize the curriculum in each cohort to plug those holes. Am I close?

Jennifer: Yes, I think you're close. When I say customized curriculum, the basics are pretty consistent — we might just emphasize one thing more than another, depending on the perceived skill sets already in the group.

Chris: Fair. Let's talk about building high-performance teams. What's a high-performance team?

Jennifer: Okay, so we read—

Chris: I'm trying to get a mini leadership development program for myself in here. (chuckles)

Jennifer: Well, a high-performing team trusts each other — they have a relationship with each other, and they trust. Trust isn't something we earn from a baseline of zero; it's something you can whittle away at, but high-performing teams start with trust. They have no fear of conflict — and I don't mean the kind of conflict where two people are beating their chests. A high-performing team is one where everyone around the table is comfortable sharing ideas, questioning ideas, being vulnerable with each other, and discussing things they disagree with.

But to do that, the foundation is that relationship — I can tell Nate I don't agree with him, because I know he trusts me, trusts my motivation, and knows where I'm coming from. So for high-performing teams, I think the foundation is relationship, trust, and then not fearing conflict with each other. And, you know, subscribe to The Five Dysfunctions of a Team—

Chris: Another Lencioni situation, yes.

Jennifer: I promised you the LDP program isn't all Lencioni, but those are two frequent flyers.

Chris: Can we stay on this for a minute — the idea is these folks are going to take these ideas back to their team. Many of them belong to more than one team. If it's a new team that hasn't worked together before, how do they build that relationship and trust on a new team?

Jennifer: Well, we model that on day one at LDP — we attempt to strip off the surface we all put on, and really get into, okay, this is who I am, this is what made me. I start that. We spend most of our first day on long introductions, our backgrounds — I go back, and most people go back to their childhood. The goal is to really get at what drives you, what makes you you, what gives you the perspective you have. It's absolutely fascinating, and it's vulnerable, and there's usually—

Chris: What you're afraid of, things you've had to overcome, that kind of stuff.

Jennifer: Yes. And I model that by modeling the vulnerability myself — this is what I struggle with, this is why — and talk about my own leadership journey and what I'm still learning. Then we go around the table, and we have dinner together after every day one. It is incredible how—

Chris: It's an emotional day.

Jennifer: Yes, it's incredibly emotional. But it just cements the team together. It's a good example of what we can do on any new team — maybe not to that extent, but, hey, before we start on this new project, let's get to know each other a little bit.

Chris: That's great. Now I know why you start with The Advantage in the course. For people who haven't read it — this is an exercise our leadership team actually went through together, reading the book and implementing the whole process. We spent, I think, four hours doing that exercise you just described, and it's eye-opening. I learned things about people I've worked side by side with for a long time — including my brother, who's in the company — that I'd never heard before, going through that process.

Jennifer: It is amazing. It is amazing.

Chris: Culture and values — is this specifically Shive-Hattery's culture and values and how that applies, or is it culture and values more broadly?

Jennifer: Both.

Chris: Okay.

Jennifer: It would be impossible to separate the culture and values discussion from our specific culture and values. The books we read really support the culture we work hard to grow and maintain through our growth — which is, we talked about this a little already, the autonomy we're offered here, the trust we put in people.

I'll talk about our people values for a moment. We have people values — I can't take credit for these, the leadership team many generations ago created them. I think they've been our people values for 40 years. They're timeless, and they're an agreement on how we're going to treat each other in our firm. The idea is that we need to create a great workplace for each other, and how we treat each other is a big part of that. We spend more time together, often, than we do with our families, and we have to have some ground rules on how we treat each other.

So these are our people values — they overflow into our clients, but the idea really starts internally. We're going to treat each other with uncompromising truth. We're going to lavish trust on each other — start with full trust buckets, not “my trust is something you have to earn.” We mentor unselfishly — we are a learning and teaching organization. This has been one of our core values for 40 years. In many firms, knowledge is power — if you have knowledge, you have the power, and it inadvertently creates a knowledge-hoarding culture. In our firm, mentorship and teaching are the power — that's what gets recognized, that's what gets the added value. At Shive-Hattery, knowledge hoarding is one of the things that will get you on a performance improvement plan, for sure.

Chris: Let me drill down on that, because that's obviously — now you're in a subject area where we could go sideways for a while, but just at a high level: if you're either knowledge hoarding, or not mentoring and teaching when you're in a role where you should be, is that something we track and make sure you're doing?

Jennifer: Absolutely.

Chris: Okay.

Jennifer: We track it, and if it's not happening, we deal with it. It's not just if you're in a position where you should be doing this — this is a shared agreement across the firm. Everybody should be mentoring somebody, and everybody should be sharing their knowledge. Even somebody who's one week in has something to teach somebody. It's about creating a great work environment, but also, we cannot move on and grow in our own careers if we're not teaching somebody else to do what we're doing today. We're going to get stuck, or we're going to end up adding hats onto our current role and burn out.

So it's a very important people value for us. They all are — being receptive to new ideas regardless of their origin, taking personal risks for the good of others and the company, sticking our necks out a little. Yes, Jen, you never thought of being a people leader before, but maybe you should stick your neck out.

Chris: But your company needs you.

Jennifer: Yes, yes. Stick your neck out a little and try it. It's okay if it fails — take a little personal risk, learn something new, try something you didn't think you might want to, take advantage of an opportunity in front of you, even if you're not sure.

Chris: That sounds interesting.

Jennifer: Yeah. Giving credit where it's due — that goes along with recognition. Being honest in all dealings — a little different from truth and trust, but it's integrity, basically. And putting the interests of others above ourselves. So those are our people values, and our leadership development program is really built around them as central to our culture.

Chris: And getting into examples — probably you personally, but also others, when they've seen that, or not seen it, in themselves or other people.

Jennifer: Right.

Chris: Yeah. If you had to guess, what are the three words you use most in the leadership development program?

Jennifer: Well, I talk about it a lot as a journey, because it can be eye-opening for people—

Chris: Becoming a leader is a journey?

Jennifer: Yes. Learning to be a great leader is a journey — it's a path that really doesn't have an end. There's no “I've arrived, I've learned all I need to learn.” This is a journey, so we talk about that a lot. We also talk a lot about delegation and teaching. I think what holds people back most often is not knowing how to delegate effectively while still providing a safety net for the person you're delegating to, and accountability—

Chris: You mean, I don't want to be accountable for somebody else's work if I let go of it.

Jennifer: It's easier to do it myself.

Chris: It's easier to do it myself.

Jennifer: It takes more time to teach and train — all these things we use as excuses not to take the time to teach somebody else how to do something. And that really stifles our own personal growth, especially our leadership journey.

Chris: Have you had people go through the program and realize they actually don't want to be a leader — they want to be an individual contributor? Or would that have been caught before they got in? I'm thinking some people might hear this and think, “Actually, I want the opposite of what happened with you — I want to be a structural engineer, I like doing the engineering work, I don't want success through others. This is what I want to do.”

Jennifer: Yeah, definitely. This leadership development program isn't about developing people with positional authority — it's more generic. So my response would be, that's great — you still need to lead in your position as a structural engineer at Shive-Hattery. There will be a time you're called on to lead something. It might be a client project — you can use these skills in anything. It might be something the structural engineering group does as a discipline—

Chris: Some kind of new standard, and they want you to lead it.

Jennifer: Yes, absolutely. This is really about how we change. Although we have groups with positional authority, and we might tailor some content to that, this is really about raw leadership, not the mechanics of leading people.

Chris: I'm going to follow that thread a bit. If everybody at Shive-Hattery might be leading at some point, it'd be better if they knew what it was to be a leader. At what point is this a universal skill you're trying to teach the whole company, versus getting to 36 people a year?

Jennifer: That's a great question. I haven't seen data on this — there's probably some out there — but somewhere between... cultural change happens when 15 to 25% of your firm are on board. You can grow and maintain a culture if it's already in 15 to 25% of your firm. I think there's some truth to that — as we onboard and grow people, we model leadership and how to lead change at all different levels. We model skills like emotional intelligence, emotional confidence. They become so ingrained in the culture that people decide pretty quickly whether they're going to fit or not.

For new grads, it becomes part of their learning journey in the culture of the firm — what it means to be a consultant, architect, or engineer. What we find is, when we bring in a new grad and maybe they test the waters five or six years into their career, they often boomerang back quickly because of the difference in culture. So, to answer your question, I don't think you need to get every person through leadership development to have a huge impact on the firm. Now, many decades into this, we're seeing that.

Chris: So I think what you're saying is: let's say I've got a leader named Denise who's been through the program, and she's great. Someone named Chad is on Denise's team — he joins the company new, watches the way Denise moves through the company, how she interacts and treats people. By the time Chad's in a position where he may be leading, he's probably absorbed a lot of that, and realized that's just what it means to work here — that's how we operate.

Jennifer: Yes. And there are pieces of this we can put into onboarding — smaller chunks of the topics we cover in LDP, maybe introductory cultural onboarding pieces. That all helps with the company culture.

Chris: As you were telling that story, I loved what you said about the 15 to 20%. I believe it's true. I had this visual of you running the leadership development program like putting logs in an everlasting fire — you just want to keep it burning, and that's the culture of the company.

Jennifer: Okay, I see what you're saying — yes, I think that's where it's at today. We're in innovate-and-continuously-improve mode, building on the work of past presidents — we have a phenomenal program. I feel like I was given this gift, and the responsibility today is, okay, what does the new generation need? It's just a little bit of adjustment.

Chris: Let's talk about that. I know one thing you're going to be doing differently, going forward. When you took the program over from Jim Lee, were there changes you made immediately? I know you added the negotiation piece — were there other things? Were they doing one cohort at a time, and now you're doing three? What did you change?

Jennifer: It's a tough transition to describe. I transitioned to president in 2020, and of course we weren't doing in-person meetings — we didn't restart LDP until maybe midway through 2021. During my transition with Jim, our former president, the LDP program was put on hold for a little while, so I actually had him come back and help lead the cohorts we picked back up and restarted. I participated in those with him, but he really took the leadership on them — I wanted to observe how he ran them, so it created a better transition.

What I observed: Jim liked to group cohorts by generation. He thought you got good discussion — people of a similar generation had good camaraderie, which helped with team building, and it was an easier discussion. I changed that right away — I love the different generational perspectives in LDP. So that's one thing I changed; I went back to grouping more along roles and what people were dealing with day to day, to generate topics of discussion, and less about generations.

But I didn't change much beyond that. I'm reading and evaluating new books constantly, but The Leadership Pipeline has been part of our curriculum since I took LDP — it's an old book, but still really great. First Among Equals, written for the professional service firm, talks about making that first turn from individual contributor to, okay, now you're a leader — what does it mean to lead people—

Chris: Do you think that's the hardest turn? You've brought that one up multiple times.

Jennifer: It is the hardest turn, because it requires significant behavioral change.

Chris: Such as?

Jennifer: Delegation, number one. We observe this in many other companies too — as you grow in roles, you just keep adding hats on, and it eventually stifles growth, stifles opportunity, stifles your own personal growth journey. The time to learn that is really early — I believe it's year one. As a brand-new architect or engineer, you teach the intern what you know. But that's the hardest turn to make, because it requires: okay, my job now isn't all about projects, people, managing teams, and clients — it's about helping people accomplish their own personal and professional goals, helping them chart a career path that can be successful for them and for us, and really getting to know them. It's just a different level of operating.

Chris: Right — school, sports, anything else they've been rewarded for hasn't been that. It's been individual contributor rewards.

Jennifer: Exactly. So I believe it's the hardest turn, and the make-or-break turn.

Chris: It's an identity shift for a person too, right?

Jennifer: Yes.

Chris: Yeah. The fifth topic — ESCI and crucial conversations.

Jennifer: Yes.

Chris: For people who don't know what this is—

Jennifer: ESCI.

Chris: ESCI.

Jennifer: Yeah, the ESCI — the emotional and social competence inventory. We usually do this early on, in session two or three, because it's so impactful. Daniel Goleman has a lot of work on this — he's considered one of the thought leaders in the field, so I rely on his work a lot. We've read a lot of different books; I have a preference right now for Primal Leadership. He gets into the science of the brain a bit, which is good — I think there's a tendency to think of emotion as some kind of woo-woo thing, not a science, and our emotions are a science. He breaks that down and relates it to how we lead and what we can work on.

As part of that topic, ahead of discussing this learning journey around emotional and social confidence and awareness, we do a 360 evaluation. When we do it for LDP, it's a very personal journey — we don't usually share their results with their immediate leader, it's for their own development. We encourage them to share what they want to—

Chris: Do you share it with the cohort?

Jennifer: They share what they want to with the cohort. By that time, they're very open and vulnerable about what they share, and what comes out is that maybe two or three people need to work on the same thing, and they start to connect on those. It's really good.

It measures, at a high level: self-awareness, your emotional self-awareness; self-management, your adaptability — achievement orientation can still get in the way; positive outlook, which is super important; and social awareness — empathy, organizational awareness — and then relationship management. And I'm cheating, I'm looking at some notes here: coaching, mentorship, influence, inspirational leadership, conflict management, and teamwork. These are all evaluated through a series of questions. We hire an independent company to administer the 360 — both the person being evaluated measures themselves on these topics, and we encourage them to reach out to peers, mostly internal. I think internal is most effective — we put on our best face for clients, our coworkers see us all. (both laughing) Almost all. So peers and anybody who's a manager or supervisor, and then we come together and look at those.

Chris: Where do you think the biggest gaps are — patterns, since you've been doing this for years — in our industry, where people self-assess and the 360 comes back with a gap?

Jennifer: This might be Shive-Hattery, or it might be professional services generally, I'm not sure — because we tend to hire and retain people who fit our culture, so we might see similar gaps for that reason. But what I see common, in how people measure themselves versus how others measure them, is in influence. I think a lot of people come into this thinking an influential person is gregarious, extroverted, has some polished way of speaking — charismatic, polished, shiny people. That was eye-opening for me—

Chris: They're underrating themselves — their influence, relative to where their peers and leaders put them.

Jennifer: This happened to me. It's eye-opening that influence — being able to influence somebody — doesn't require polish or charisma. It requires authenticity, listening, relationship, and meeting people where they're at. So it's one we see often as a gap, and most often here we see people rating themselves lower than their peers and even their supervisors do. Every once in a while we'll see it the other way — I'm like, “Whoa!” (laughs)

Chris: But we tend to attract a humble crew into this industry.

Jennifer: Yes. A lot of humility here.

Chris: So with the implication that most people are underrating themselves, especially around influence — what do you talk about as a group? What do you do with that information?

Jennifer: Well, that's a great question, Chris. I think it's good to pick that up as a group and talk about it — talk about people who are influential in our own lives, the characteristics they had, and does that match your vision of a leader? We're doing all this reading about what leadership is and is not — does what you're learning and reading match your perception of what leadership is?

Chris: Do you all read Good to Great as part of this program?

Jennifer: We have — I've read Good to Great. It's a great book, but we don't teach it. I think it's getting a little dated, and has examples of so many—

Chris: Companies that aren't so great anymore, right.

Jennifer: Yes, so many of these — that's such a prevailing problem. John Kotter's A Force for Change used to be such a great leading-change book to read, and it's so outdated today, with companies that were once great, made great decisions, and then lost their way. Books become dated.

Chris: In there, I was thinking of the Level 5 Leader concept specifically from Good to Great — which is, I think, what you're describing: oftentimes they're not the people on the cover of Forbes or Fortune.

Jennifer: Right, right.

Chris: The new Jim Collins book is pretty good — I just read it last month. He's following pairs of people — two scientists, two artists, and so on — who were peers at the same time, and follows them through their lives, trying to figure out what makes people successful over a long horizon, keeping the fire burning. It's interesting — it took him ten years to write. I thought it was really, really interesting.

Jennifer: That one would be fascinating.

Chris: Yes, I'll put that on my reading list. Thank you. There's a lot in there.

This is great. I think one thing I keep coming back to as we're talking — I'm trying not to ask this in a leading way, so here's what I'm observing: this is deeply important to you, and you enjoy it. And it seems true that you see this as a big investment in the future of the company. So when people, inside or outside of Shive-Hattery, ask, “Jen, how are you spending two days a month on this as the CEO of this company?” — what do you say?

Jennifer: I get that question, and I get, “How much money are you spending on this?”

Chris: Fair.

Jennifer: Right. I think this is such a long-term investment in our culture and resiliency that I believe it's very important work for top leadership in the company. Now that we're decades into this, I believe it's driving a lot of our success — it's the foundation, and it didn't immediately bear results. We started this in the mid-'90s; we didn't see the kind of results we see today back in 2000. It took some time and effort, working through 12 people at a time, to influence and continue our culture.

So I think it's the work and responsibility of leaders, especially top leadership, to pass this on. One of the things we focus on in our culture is the idea that Shive-Hattery, and who we are, needs to exist for the next generation. The things we love and admire about this firm, we're pouring into this next generation, building them up. We've got a lot of love in our organization — I'll use that word — and with that comes some responsibility to pass on something pretty great to them, so they have the same opportunity my generation had.

And that's starting to go away in our world. There's more emphasis — I wasn't going to go there, but I am a little bit — I don't think all private equity is evil, but there's something happening to architecture and engineering right now where we're becoming very growth-for-growth's-sake focused, instead of growth-so-people-have-opportunity focused. It's really the financial end result, and it's having a huge impact on our cultures and how we're working, and eventually I think it's impacting our clients and the service we give them—

Chris: And the communities.

Jennifer: It's certainly impacting those too. And part of the responsibility today — and this isn't something Jim probably thought about, or Tom Hayden, the president before him — is building a resilient firm that can still provide the same opportunities for our team: the same autonomy, the same ability to build your own career path, the same ability to stick your neck out and try something, and it's okay if it doesn't work. It doesn't have to yield some short-term result — part of our responsibility is to chase long-term impact. That takes fortitude — it takes investment beyond our own generation.

Chris: There's a book — something like building an evergreen company, I don't think that's the exact title — by the founder of the Tugboat Institute, which I think you'd like. But I think the word you didn't say, but you're saying, is also about Shive-Hattery staying independent, right?

Jennifer: Yes, we're pretty fiercely independent right now.

Chris: Right — so in order to preserve the long-term sustainability, culture, and independence of the company, this is the kind of investment you'd make. If the plan were to get bought in five to ten years, you may not put money, time, and energy into a leadership development program.

Jennifer: Yeah. Why would we do this?

Chris: Right. To that end, I know you've made some recent changes to the program, and have thoughts about making it sustainable and able to evolve and grow. What's next for the leadership development program?

Jennifer: Oh, okay — this is a big change for me. We've grown quite a bit. When I became president in 2020, we were just under 400 people. We stayed pretty flat through '21 — we anticipated a big growth year during COVID, but it was pretty flat. Since then we've been growing steadily, and now, at the moment, I think we're 760 people, including interns.

This program isn't very scalable as it's currently structured. I'm maxed out at three cohorts at a time, which means I'm touching 36 people at a time, and I'm with them for 15 months — not very scalable. As we grow, and this is so important for our culture and everything we've talked about, we need to find a way to preserve this and still reach 15 to 25% of our firm. That means I can't do every session for every cohort.

So, in the classes actually starting Monday and Tuesday — the first cohort of next week — I'm kicking the class off, doing session one and session five, and we've got different executive team leaders pairing off to do sessions two, three, and four.

The thing I'm not looking forward to is that, through spending this much time with a group of people, I get to know our leadership pretty intimately, and I see the impact of those relationships years after graduation. So there's going to be a little less of a one-on-one connection. I have the fortune of spending day one with them, doing the getting-to-know-each-other exercise, and then session five, where we wrap up—

Chris: That's when they present—

Jennifer: —the capstone presentation, yes.

So I think the positives outweigh the negatives—

Chris: The positives for Shive-Hattery, but for you—

Jennifer: —the positives — this is back to the people value of sacrificing for the good of Shive-Hattery. I will get to know more people, right? Maybe not quite as deep a level. It's incredible how that kind of connection can drive performance — who we reach out to when we need to lead certain change. You get to know certain people, but now I'm not going to be the only one with that knowledge — we'll have six other leaders who get a taste of who these people are. I think it'll help drive better decisions on who we make owners, who we make leaders in different positions, another perspective on that. So I think the benefits are probably going to outweigh any hesitation I have.

Chris: How are you preparing the people who are leading it?

Jennifer: In our leadership team meetings, we're practicing — reading a book together and discussing the same questions we'll discuss with cohorts. What I had to really practice was not talking too much, and really leading through discovery, not through—

Chris: Giving the answer.

Jennifer: Yes — getting really good at asking questions, then reframing or redirecting the question. So we're practicing that, and I've gotten better at it over time, and they will too — they're trying something new, and they can hold each other accountable as they pair off, watching and giving each other guidance on how they're directing or reframing.

Chris: So is this an all-in commitment, or a “let's try it and see how it plays out”?

Jennifer: I think we've got to be all in on this.

Chris: There's no plan B?

Jennifer: Well, plan B might be a cohort staying with a smaller group of leaders, and me not being involved in every cohort — maybe just some. I'm hoping plan A works.

Chris: Okay. And if plan A works, how many leaders per year would you get through the program, versus 36?

Jennifer: I think we could easily do five or six cohorts that way.

Chris: Okay, great — so you double your throughput, roughly. That's great.

Have other CEOs or leaders at AEC firms asked you about this program, tried to implement it? What do you end up telling them — if they ask for advice, where's this going to go wrong, how do I make this go right?

Jennifer: I don't know... I can think of many leaders who've reached out for curriculum, for what we talk about, for the questions we ask. I don't know of any firm that's really implemented it — it's a big, scary investment. I had the advantage of saying this is three generations in, that I'm benefiting from — I don't have to make the initial investment, just the maintenance investment. But I'm certain that Tom Hayden, when he did his first class, didn't see the results of that in his presidency. It was an investment in the future, and that's really hard to do today, especially given the whole private equity conversation and the growth pace — even firms not in private equity feel like they need to keep pace with the private equity firms. It's really transforming the industry, making it a very difficult investment. I think it's easy for firms to send people to a leadership development training offered by one of the many consultants out there who'll train your leaders for you.

Chris: Why would you not do that, knowing what you know? What's the advantage of doing it internally?

Jennifer: I think leadership is so tied to your individual firm culture that if you disconnect the two, you end up with just the mechanics of leadership — the how-tos. You'll get the why one-on-ones are important, and the how-to, but you won't get the connection to your firm culture, and how you use that to create change in your firm. Your firm's leadership needs to make that connection. So I think the mechanics can be well trained elsewhere, but what's most difficult — the special part, individual and unique to every firm — is how that ties to our culture, and how we use what we're learning in our own individual culture.

Chris: I love that. So, above the waterline, we've been talking about the leadership development program, but there's a topic underneath that's been building — how to build a long-term, sustainable company and culture, and this is one of the tools in the toolkit for Shive-Hattery to do that. On the thing you brought up about that being hard in this environment right now — and maybe this is outside just leadership development — how is your team navigating that? Wanting to be long-term, reinvesting in the company, but also competing in a private equity space?

Jennifer: Oh, we have to continually remind ourselves why we're growing — our why isn't to be the biggest firm, it's not to compare ourselves to other firms. Our why for growth is to provide opportunities for our people, so they stay, so they don't have to leave to find opportunity. Because usually when people leave voluntarily, that's what they're leaving for — some opportunity they couldn't get in our organization. That's our primary reason to grow, so we have to constantly remind ourselves of that.

And then continually picking up our decisions and asking, is this good for the long term? Is this good for the long-term health of our organization? Is this the right decision today, and will it still be the right decision five, ten, twenty years from now? Those are harder to make. A good example is everything going on with AI right now.

Chris: Haven't heard of it.

Jennifer: No, none of us have. What are we going to invest in with AI, and what are we not? We're doubling down on relationships — I think relationships were number one 50 years ago, they're number one today, and I think they'll be even more important 30 years from now, as technology pushes against that. We're humans, made to be in relationship with each other, and we're doubling down on that — a lot of face-to-face things. This is face-to-face, not virtual.

Chris: The leadership development program, you mean?

Jennifer: Yes — those kinds of investments, where we're investing in relationships while also investing in automation and AI for some things.

Chris: Right, that's actually been one of my pet theories — I don't think those things have to be mutually exclusive. I think there are ways to implement AI that free up time for people to spend more time mentoring, in apprenticeship, with clients.

Jennifer: Yes, more time in the stuff we love.

Chris: More time in the stuff we love.

Jennifer: The creativity.

Chris: Yeah, it's actually a fun exercise to draw that line — the life of a project, what do you love, what do you not love, automate this—

Jennifer: Right.

Chris: Maybe this will be our last question. As you've been leading cohorts through this AI transition — and the PE transition, and probably a couple other things, tariffs, we could go on—

Jennifer: COVID.

Chris: How much COVID, how much do those issues of the day find their way into the leadership development program conversation, versus how much you're trying to talk about evergreen principles of leadership?

Jennifer: Oh, it's both.

Chris: Yeah.

Jennifer: Right? It's keeping the evergreen in mind while dealing with the day to day — that's kind of the whole art of leadership. So yes, we pick up all of those issues. I don't know that we've talked about COVID in the last few cohorts, but it was a big topic at the time. Private equity is a big topic today, as people learn about it and want to know if they should have a position on it, why we are the way we are—

Chris: People, meaning people going through the program. I've got the CFO and the CEO here, so now I get to ask my question.

Jennifer: Yes, a lot of private equity discussion today.

Chris: Interesting. Well, Jennifer, thank you for being so generous with your time and sharing this. I think people will want to learn more about your program. I hope we see more AE firms find a way to stay independent and evergreen, and build long-term — that's something we share a passion for. It's the kind of company we're trying to build, too. I feel like we have a strong affinity for firms trying to do the same thing. Thank you for talking so openly about that, and what you're building.

Jennifer: Yeah, I'm happy to share. Reach out if you'd like more information on the program.

Chris: Is LinkedIn probably the best place to get in touch with you?

Jennifer: LinkedIn is great. I'll have to put a note on my calendar to check it regularly — I'm terrible.

Chris: That's hilarious. Okay, fair enough. Awesome — well, thank you again, Jennifer.

Jennifer: Thank you, Chris.