Dreams and Delivery
Real stories from tech pros who deliver at work and dream beyond it. We cover the tech landscape in an age of AI with layoffs and opportunities that come from change.
Dreams and Delivery
Jessica Valentine Nelson: Aligning Who You Are With How You Live and Lead
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This conversation is about what organizational change actually teaches you about personal transformation, how Jess turned a layoff into a launchpad, and what it looks like to build a life outside performance. She also shares her honest take on where AI is and isn’t landing in the change management space.
Jessica Valentine Nelson spent 15+ years inside global organizations: Accenture, Dell, lululemon, helping leaders and teams navigate transformation. She knew the craft of change management from the inside.
Then she went through her own.
About Jessica Valentine Nelson Jessica Valentine Nelson is an executive coach, organizational change consultant, and founder of Guided by Jess Valentine and Full Body Studio. She spent 15+ years at Accenture, Dell Technologies, Optiv, and lululemon helping leaders and teams navigate transformation. Today she runs a coaching practice and a community wellness space in Bastrop County, Texas, and writes about purposeful living on her Substack, Lead with Heart.
Connect with Jessica: guidedbyjessvalentine.com | fullbodystudio.com
About your host Christine Kahn is a Staff Technical Program Manager with 12+ years leading AI platforms and program delivery at Intuit, OpenTable, 20th Century Fox, and Realtor.com, and a musician and soundbath practitioner outside of it.
Connect: linkedin.com/in/christinekahn | christinekmusic.com
© 2026 Dreams and Delivery LLC. All rights reserved.
Welcome to Dreams and Delivery, a podcast for tech professionals, real stories from people who deliver at work and dream beyond it. I'm your host, Christine Kahn. By day, I'm a staff technical program manager in big tech. By night, I'm a musician and a sound bath meditation practitioner. Today's guest is my longtime friend and trusted guide, Jessica Valentine Nelson. She's a senior consultant in organizational change management and she runs a Substack called Lead with Heart. She just navigated her own major career transitions, so she's walking her talk in real time. Jessica, welcome.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Christine. I appreciate you having me. So honored to be here.
SPEAKER_01So tell us, how did you end up in organizational change management?
SPEAKER_00Great question. So my first job out of college was being a sorority consultant. And many people are like, what is that? Especially if you're in an international stage. But that was a leadership development opportunity that allowed me to learn how to work with different groups of people from different geographies and also help inspire and influence change from the inside out. And I worked with organizations size 25 to about 250. So, right, big small groups, universities all over the all over the country. I knew that because of my sorority experience when I was appointed the leader of the group I was in charge of at 19 and had to lead a transformation that I wanted to be a change management consultant. Yet when I originally applied for all of my career opportunities to start, they said, you need more experience. And so I started in technology sales in the cybersecurity industry. A client created an organizational strategy role for me where I was the organizational strategist at Dell Technologies and created their cybersecurity intern program. I then transitioned back into being in a sales function, got education and certifications and human resources, and then moved back into change management consulting because I love training, I love people, I love chaos, and I also like being able to manage it when I can influence and control it.
Working with a Human Approach
SPEAKER_01You've always struck me as someone who has a really human approach in the way that you work. I'm curious, was this always the case, or was it an intentional decision you made at some point along the way?
SPEAKER_00I think for me, I worked hard and I got lucky. And there were some rooms that I found myself in, especially at a young age where I was talking about technology transformations and learning how to work with different leaders. There were times that I thought I fit in, and there were times where I didn't feel like I fit in. And so the program management arm, the inclusion and belonging arm is somewhere I always felt like I could be my full self. In addition, I didn't have the traditional background. I was told no a lot. I tried to pivot internally at a consulting firm that I was working for, and I didn't know some baseline HR things like the 70-2010 model for professional development and other adult learning things. And it wasn't until I met a mentor, Linda Dolce Morey, who's the chief learning officer at the Executive Women's Forum, who said, Jessica, it's time for you to become a certified coach through ICF, in addition to going back to school so you can get a job doing what you love, which at the time I thought was learning and development. So there's always a part of my work that's related to growth and development, but also a big part of my heart that really leans into the transformation of self and the personal responsibility that we have as professionals to take care of ourselves while doing great work.
SPEAKER_01You know, when you mentioned that you were told no a lot, it reminded me of a conversation I had with one of my previous CEOs, Debbie Sue at Open Table. And I asked her, you know, what's work for you to keep moving up in your career? And she said, Well, you know, I've just been told no a lot, but I keep asking.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, in my experience in a new hire sales program for a company called Checkpoint Software, we were in New York. There were 30 of us, 15 Europeans, 15 Americans, and we had to sell comedy club tickets in Times Square just to get used to rejection. Like it was an active choice. And I think when you're early in your career, it's easier to reach. But I also believe that for me, now being 15 years in, there's been some intentional plateaus of opportunities in my career where I needed to pause and hang on, needed to pivot behind the scenes, needed to explore new conversations. And then there were times that certain leaders didn't align with my personal values, and I really lived within that friction state of who am I naturally? Where is my professional strengths and skills best aligned? And is that value being seen and appreciated? And if it's not, then it's time for me to exit or hang on as long as I need to hang on and then and take a new leap. And I want to say for anyone listening, impacted by layoffs, impacted by this identity crisis, I would call it in our careers, that it's really critical that you clarify what you individually want and mean, and then be able to articulate that in conversations moving forward. And the more that you say it, uh, the more that you are confronted with right rejections or redirection, the more likely you are to get the outcome that you want.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you for that. You know, it's it's really a time right now where we have been seeing a lot of layoffs across technology. And I do see that it's creating opportunities though for people to really think hard on what do they really want to do? Do they have a dream, perhaps a small business that they've always wanted to get running? And um, maybe you could share some insight there since I know you have also done some of your own projects on the side, like teaching yoga and and your guides, uh mentorship programs that you've done over the years. Um, would you like to speak more about that?
SPEAKER_00Yes. I feel like a part of me naturally, call it neurodivergence or having lots of energy. I didn't find fulfillment in my career when I was in a tech sales role at work. It wasn't, it was more of the function of what I was doing. There's a great resource I read called The Crossroads Between Should and Must by L Luna. And you can watch there's a three-minute video, an hour-long TED Talk, or the actual book. But it talks about everyone who has a job, a career, and a calling, and to know which one you're in. And so for me, as my life has evolved and work has evolved, having something outside of that is really refreshing to me. And having a business for the past six years, there's been highs and lows within that times where I had more energy to do more things, and kind of where I'm at now of the I'm bringing back sharing the love of what I'm doing and the art of creating without attachment to I should be making a certain dollar value in my side business in order to pivot. Like that's not the purpose either. So lots of mentorship, lots of formal and informal learning. And I think it's important to be available to your dreams, meaning create space in your calendar to prioritize those pillars that are important to you. And I also believe and also teach a lot about the things that we often resist is where the true growth lies or where we really want to ascend. And that's not always comfortable as a in human nature. For example, I don't for the past 10 years, I've put my recipes on Instagram stories. I've never put them on my website ever. It's still the trash can that I'm kicking, but I'm saying it out loud so I have some accountability of it's gonna, I can put that online without uh beating myself up on food photography or not being a New York Times best-selling cookbook author. Like it doesn't matter. It's for my love and sharing what I love with others.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, it's interesting, uh, just as someone who's also creative but works in tech as a program manager. You try to apply some of the organizational concepts to your own projects of okay, plan out my year, what am I going to achieve this quarter? What are my goals? And it's almost like you create your own backlog for your projects, but at the same time, creativity is not necessarily linear. So you have to give yourself that room and flexibility to be able to try something out and then pivot and try something else, and maybe have a few different projects open, which is different than the traditional way you would deliver at work.
SPEAKER_00Right. What's been really interesting for me lately, because I moved out of downtown Austin into a small historic town called Bass Drop, which for me, Austin was oversaturated with yoga teachers and coaches, still is, but there's plenty of options. And where I live now, it's more competitive, or I feel like I have more critics on my creativity. And just to see or witness how that prevents or blocks my own creative flow, uh, or allows me the opportunity to lean into okay, how can I let my life experience and what I'm personally feeling still not impact my art? And I love the book Creative Act by Rick Rubin. I need and will finish it. That's a good book. But but it speaks to what you said, Christina, of being able to pause and really get clear on your dreams and like be inspired, like creating that space. I think that's the hard thing for Americans to do or professionals in tech, especially, is how do you reduce your own noise and allow yourself to, it's not even about scheduling time anymore. For me, it's about how do I enjoy leisure and know that that's purposeful to be offline and have boundaries versus always being available via Teams or a ping or to someone else's external demand that is like not on my list for the day.
SPEAKER_01So it's like a lot of we can we could go into a whole discussion about boundaries maybe at another time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and also I need help. I'm like, bring on, bring on, bring on, bring on the boundaries, but also I think uh the thought of flow state is important, like finding flow within your creative projects and your dreams, and also at work. And I think there's a lot of friction at work or sometimes within ourselves, and that's our individual responsibility to take care of that. Yeah. Because no one else is gonna do it for you. That's your own inner work.
SPEAKER_01How do you deal with resistance, you know, or friction or just whatever you want to call it, both in your own projects, but also encountering it at work?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think it's important to know the target audience and priority level, like with it. It's a very change management thing to say and do, but kind of synthesize it. But for me, it's uh especially if I'm not connected with nature, not connected in my body, I will be a frazzled frenetic, spinning too much on two espresso human being. And so I really have to take five or 10 minutes out of the day to do yoga or before a bigger, like I volunteered to do a big creative initiative that is aligned to a big organizational change. Before I did that, I got on my yoga mat for 15 minutes and took a break because that helped fuel my like the work product is better. So I think it's being able to have that self-awareness to get out of your workchair and go get into your body through your own mindfulness practices, um, not just book in your days to think something happens before or after work. I think our lives need to be and are much more fluid uh than we give it credit for. But we're we're stopping ourselves from moving forward because we're not intuitively connected.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think the first step is really that awareness, but allowing yourself to pause to really get in your body and realize what really am I feeling right now? Is this aligned with what I want to do and who I am?
SPEAKER_00Yes. And isn't it though, sometimes professionally perceived, if you're back-to-back in meetings, you're more important. If you haven't gotten a lunch break or skip lunch to meet with a client, you're more important or smarter. And that's not the case. No, not at all. Not taking a lunch break. Like for me, I work better when I do morning movement and will have a delayed start, and I can go later. Like I can work from nine to six easy or nine to seven. But if I do that, because I do volunteer stuff at night, right? Like I gotta shut it down at least.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and and actually, this is a great segue into a hot topic nowadays, which is AI and how that comes into play in your work. I do feel that uh in a lot of uh my day-to-day AI can make things quicker where you start your day with a program, brief, or you know, just a sense of what's going on. But I'm curious, how have you been uh experiencing this change in the workplace with AI?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think it's interesting from a leadership and pillar perspective, especially in the cybersecurity industry. I have a client who has a security policy that they won't allow us to transcribe meetings. So, what does that do? Make my job naturally a little bit harder because I need to do everything manually, which is fine. So I think it depends on the individual organizational stance. However, in my current role and using copilot and other AI tools, I think the the achievements in PowerPoint with AI, amazing. As like a PowerPoint forward consulting person, love it. Absolutely love it. Communications, though, I think it's really important to feed your AI well, as well as proofread, because people know when things are generic. I also think it's a corporate communications challenge, whether you're using A or not, to make sure you're not repeating messages. Uh, for example, I was once at an organization, they usually word-for-word copy-paste communication from a leader to two different teams, had the same errors, and it had comments and verbiage in there, like on a personal note, XYZ. Well, it wasn't personal because it was scripted, and whoever wrote it also had typos. So I think people know when there's that inauthenticity in the workplace. And sometimes I believe that organizations should put less details out there and be more straightforward, influenced by AI, but not fully detailed in the way we communicate from top down or bottom up. I do think it's problematic. Yeah, and especially in change management.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, because people want that message to be just right.
SPEAKER_00Well, and again, if it's a technical change, yes, you need lots of details. But I had a the company that I currently work for, they announced that right they were doing a big shift and we were separating the consulting organization from the rest of the firm, which is fine. And they gave everyone a canned communication and said, Well, go and be excited and share this with your clients. And it was way too long, and the clients are already navigating their own changes and priorities, so they didn't care. So I needed to personalize that communication that someone wrote and refine it into more of an executive briefing, like a one or two line, here's the here's current state, future state, and what you need to know or do about it.
SPEAKER_01Like I think the less I there's definitely still a need for a human in the loop, you know. Like, sure, it can shortcut things, but at the end of the day, you absolutely need to be reading what message you're putting out there.
SPEAKER_00But also, it's funny, the corporate comms people, since I've written communications for a CISO before, having them sound warm and fuzzy like how I would speak is really interesting. I'm like, what? They're they're not as human-centric as I would be, but they wrote a great comm. I wrote a great comm using their and they're signing off on it. But I think it's uh knowing people's tones and being able to replicate those tones.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, Jessica, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing your experience, your stories. Where can people find you and follow your work?
SPEAKER_00From a professional perspective, LinkedIn, I have a great newsletter with over 900 followers called Weekly Work Wisdom. Highly recommend it. For me, it's a place where I get to share lessons learned as a hybrid yoga and meditation instructor and a change professional. And if you're curious around my classes or programs, you can check out our website, uh Full Body Studio, as well as www.guided by justvalentine.com.
SPEAKER_01Thanks so much, Jessica. To everyone listening, if this resonated, subscribe and share it with someone who needs it. I'm Christine Kahn, and this is Dream Stand Delivery.