Jen Timm
St. Louis, MO
Perceptist
LinkedIn
Contact: jen@perceptist.com
she/her
Most often works with: Private Foundations, Community Foundations, Intermediary Grantmaking Organizations, Philanthropy Serving Organizations
Challenges most often addressed:
Jen works with foundations and nonprofits on strategy and organizational change, helping leaders find clarity and momentum when the path feels complex or unclear. This includes redesigning grantmaking strategies and processes, leading organizational transitions, and building the learning systems and adaptive structures that support continuous improvement.
She designs and facilitates the processes that help leadership teams move through complexity together, building shared understanding and the internal capacity to sustain change over time.
Jen Timm is a strategist, facilitator, and organizational development consultant with expertise in building the systems and leadership that help organizations thrive. She is co-founder and Principal at Perceptist, a mission-driven strategy consulting firm serving foundations, nonprofits, and social enterprises.
Jen has held a range of leadership and advisory roles across philanthropy, education, and social enterprise. At Carnegie Corporation of New York, she supported grantmaking and post-investment strategy for a national portfolio focused on expanding access to innovative school models. At Education Strategy Group, she served as Director of Strategy and Innovation, leading the firm's five-year growth strategy, building operational infrastructure to support sustainable scale, and directing organizational change initiatives to evolve staff culture and capabilities. At Agora Partnerships, Jen led a consulting team delivering accelerator programs for social entrepreneurs across Latin America preparing to raise impact investment, and grew Agora's presence in Colombia.
Jen believes that the most important work happens at the intersection of strategy and people, and that durable change requires both rigorous thinking and deep human engagement. She is known for her ability to synthesize across complexity, bring rigor and kindness in equal measure, and build lasting capacity in the leaders and teams she works with.
She holds an M.A. in Quantitative Methods for the Social Sciences from Columbia University, an M.S. in Education – Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages from Fordham University, a B.A. in Latin American Studies from Wesleyan University, and is completing her Co-Active Coaching certification. She is a Fulbright Scholar, Teach for America alumna, and member of the National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers. Jen has lived in four countries, speaks three languages, and is based in St. Louis, MO, where she can be found exploring the city's rich cultural scene, hiking across the region's trails, or happily cooking in her kitchen.
