Jason has spent more than a decade making organizations better at the things that tend to break them: unclear processes, siloed teams, and the resistance that surfaces every time someone mentions change. A Six Sigma Black Belt and transformation leader with experience at General Electric, McKesson, Pfizer, and UKG, he's built a career in roles that don't come with clean authority — cross-functional, often scrappy, and complicated in ways that don't fit neatly on a resume.
His approach: trust the people around you, communicate more than feels necessary, and don't confuse a title with real influence. The process expertise matters. But it's the people side that makes it work.
Two Things
When asked what it takes to be a good leader, Jason doesn't reach for a framework. He reaches for two words.
"Empathy and trust," he says. "Those two things stick out."
For Jason, empathy isn't a soft skill bolted onto the rest. It's the foundation. It means making sure people know you have their back — not just at work, but in general. "It's just understanding and making sure the team understands that you support them both professionally and personally, that you'll support them throughout whatever journey they're on."
He's seen it in the assessments. Every time he takes a DISC or StrengthsFinder, empathy lands in the top three. Not because he's soft. Because he pays attention.
Empathy is always in my top three. It's just understanding and making sure the team understands that you support them — both professionally and personally.
Trust is the other piece. And for Jason it has a straightforward application: don't micromanage. "I've told the team before — I trust you. If you make a mistake, I'll have your back, as long as you can provide the logic of why you did something." That's the deal. When people know they own their decisions, they make better ones.
Leading Without Authority
Most of the roles Jason has held come with one thing missing: a reporting relationship. In transformation work, you get dropped into a project with people who have their own bosses, their own priorities, and no particular reason to follow your lead. You don't do their reviews. You can't assign consequences. You earn influence or you don't get anything done.
"They do not report to me," he says, "but I need them for this project to be successful." He calls it leading without authority. And he'll tell you it's harder than managing people who actually work for you.
Leading without authority — they do not report to me, but I need them for this project to be successful. That's a lot tougher than having direct reports, in my opinion.
What it takes, in his view: patience and communication. Patience because the people you need don't always see why your project matters. Communication because if they don't understand the purpose, they'll deprioritize you. "Explain to them why they're part of the project, why they're an important piece of it. They're there for a reason. They know something. They're part of that process."
When someone pushes back, Jason says the worst move is to push back harder. Get curious first. What's driving it? Prior experience? Politics? Something else entirely? "Find out why they're pushing back — and if they think their process is better, leverage that. Make it a best practice. Get them invested in the outcome."
Built from Scratch
If Jason has one career highlight, it's not something he was handed. It's something he and his team at UKG decided to build because they saw a gap and decided to fill it.
The Lean Six Sigma certification program at UKG started as an idea and eventually became one of the most in-demand programs in the company — with a waitlist in the sixties and seventies before the initiative had even reached a third of the organization. The team built everything from scratch: the tools, the templates, the curriculum, the cadence, the sponsorship structure. They worked on it constantly, alongside their actual jobs.
"We put a stake in the ground and just did it," he says. "We started with the tools and the templates and then we started getting to the gritty — what's the vision, what's the mission, what does the cadence look like, where do we start, who needs to be the sponsor?" Two waves of green belt certifications went through before the waitlist started building.
Everyone benefits from a basic understanding of continuous improvement. If you just question what you do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis — there's going to be things you can solve and get better at.
What made it work wasn't just the content. It was the framing. Transformation programs carry a lot of anxiety — people hear "process improvement" and immediately wonder about their jobs. Jason's team made the case differently. We're not here to cut headcount. We're here to take things off your plate. "We're here to make your job, your life a little bit easier. If we can reduce some of this burden off of you, you can focus your time more efficiently." The waitlist made the argument better than any pitch deck could.
Playing Switzerland
Not every transformation project starts with willing participants. Some of the situations Jason has found himself in involved people who weren't just skeptical — they were working against it, for reasons that had nothing to do with the work itself.
His first move in those situations is to resist the urge to push back. "Figure out why they're pushing back. What's the reason? Is it based on prior experience? Is it political?" Once you understand the source, you can address it. Until then, you're arguing with something you don't fully understand.
The posture Jason defaults to in those situations is what he calls Switzerland — neutral. "We're just trying to give you the best potential outcome possible. We're not picking sides here." It's not passive. It's a choice to stay focused on outcomes and data. "Remove the feelings from it. Use actual data, actual facts to prove — here's what we have, here's where we're trying to go."
We always wear the hat of Switzerland. We're neutral — we're just trying to give you the best potential outcome possible. We're not picking sides here.
When that doesn't work right away, he falls back on over-communication. "I've always told the team: over-communicate as much as possible. Have the leader tell you to stop. Have them say, I've got enough. But you always keep them in the loop." The goal isn't to overwhelm — it's to eliminate the information vacuum that lets anxiety and speculation fill in.
Handling Leadership Fatigue
Transformation work wears on people. Projects run long. The same conversations keep happening. Resistance shows up again from the same direction. And at some point, the team hits a wall — not from lack of effort, but from the sheer weight of sustained ambiguity.
Jason saw this up close during the UKG merger. A lot of moving parts, not a lot of clear answers, and a team that was being asked to keep performing through it all. His response wasn't to push harder or rally everyone around a pep talk. It was to keep things human. Weekly one-on-ones, a bit lighter in tone, gave people room to say what they were actually feeling. Behind the scenes, he and a fellow manager would work through the harder issues together — so the team didn't have to carry the weight of every unresolved question.
"Make sure you keep it lively. Recognize this isn't probably the way it should be done — but things will get better. Once we get through this hurdle, let's move on." That's not cheerleading. It's honest acknowledgment that the situation is hard, paired with a clear signal that there's something on the other side worth moving toward.
The leaders who handle fatigue well, Jason says, are the ones who see it coming. They don't wait for burnout to show up. They build in the small things — the check-ins, the lighter moments, the recognition that people are doing something genuinely hard — before the wall arrives.
What the Pandemic Taught Him
The pandemic confirmed something Jason had already started to believe: the line between professional and personal is thinner than most job descriptions let on. Lockdowns, kids at home, dogs barking on calls — it pushed him to extend empathy into situations he'd never thought to prepare for.
"It kind of brought down that facade for me that you have to be buttoned up and everything's got to be perfect." When someone's dog barks on a video call or a doorbell interrupts a meeting, that's not a distraction. That's life. And a leader who can hold that with grace earns something no performance review can manufacture. "We're all just trying to live through this the best that we can."
What He'd Tell His Younger Self
Jason reached back to Theodore Roosevelt when asked what he'd tell a younger version of himself: "The only man who never makes a mistake never does anything."
It's the philosophy he actually leads by. Make the call. Take the risk. Own it if it goes wrong, explain your reasoning, and don't do it the same way twice. "Don't try to be perfect. No one's perfect. You'll learn along the way. Things will get easier."
You're going to make mistakes — as long as you learn from them, don't make the same mistake twice. Be open about it. Be transparent with your team. You'll be better for it.
He pairs that with something it took him a while to really internalize: "I'm not a doctor. No one's going to die from this." The work matters. But it's process work. Keep it in perspective.
Still Improving
The same mindset Jason brought to the certification program — there's always room to get better — he applies to himself. His advice to anyone in a leadership role: ask. Ask your team where you can improve. Ask for the 360. Ask what they actually need from you.
"Constantly ask — how can I get better? What am I succeeding at? Where can I help? Where do you need me?" The leaders who stop asking are the ones who stop growing.