Our Team

Jen is a strategic innovation leader who helps organizations transform and grow by creating value that leads to revenue growth and social impact. She leads the development of new services and strategies by facilitating a human-centered research and development process rooted in entrepreneurial methods. With over 20 years of experience working in public, private, and non-profit sectors, she is uniquely adept at cross-pollinating approaches from other sectors to uncover new solutions that create economic and human benefits. She specializes in stakeholder engagement, facilitating creative workshops, and developing strategic plans that align mission and metrics. Her work is guided by inclusive and sustainable practices.

Experience

Before starting Align, she led the Pennsylvania Governor’s Office of Transformation & Innovation and worked with Agency leaders to manage efficiency projects. Earlier, she was a key leader on the founding team of a STEM university start-up and led its initial development of marketing, admissions, financial aid, continuing education, and contracted training functions. There, she experienced firsthand the grittiness of launching new initiatives in a highly competitive, mature market. She’s also been an Interim VP of Enrollment & Innovation at a regional art college, where she co-led a turnaround of the admissions department. Jen has led workshops and taught graduate courses in entrepreneurship and innovation.  

Background

Jen has a Master’s in Business from Penn State University and numerous experiences in non-profit leadership.  She’s a wife and mother, and grew up among the dairy farms of Northeastern PA. Her blue-collar upbringing taught her the importance of persistence and creative problem-solving.

Click here to read a short blog post about how her prior work led her to start Align.

Joella has a broad base of business experience, with over 20 years spanning manufacturing, engineered products, food and beverage, and educational publishing. Joella has led global marketing teams, implemented customer research programs, launched internationalized websites that doubled lead generation, and developed sales dashboards that increased close rates from single digits to 30%. She has also held direct budgetary responsibility for marketing and product growth initiatives. She excels in bringing departments together to align strategy and execution. Joella is well-versed in integrating AI tools, helping teams streamline processes while increasing results.

Experience

Joella founded Big Pixie Consulting, where she partners with companies to design go-to-market strategies and strengthen operations. Previously, she served in leadership roles with Philadelphia Mixing Solutions (now SPX Flow), Demme Learning, and Advanced Food Products, llc, and launched a startup that applied employee-driven innovation to green spaces. She is also active as a SCORE mentor, speaker, and community leader.

Joella holds an MBA in Strategic Leadership and Entrepreneurship from Penn State’s Smeal College of Business and a BA in International Studies from Millersville University. She lives in Lancaster, PA with her husband and rescue cats. 

Megan Leaman Heinly is an independent consultant and social worker. She specializes in stakeholder interviews, focus groups, qualitative data analysis, and strategic planning processes. With over 15 years of experience in human services, she brings a trauma-informed lens and a systems-thinking approach to every project—connecting micro-level experiences to macro-level change. Her work is grounded in the belief that dignity, equity, and collaboration must be central to any meaningful transformation.

Experience

Megan’s career in social work and nonprofit leadership has centered on advancing trauma-informed, family-centered, and equity-driven initiatives. She led strategic efforts to improve economic mobility and well-being, including launching a county-wide Two-Generation (2Gen) approach at Community Action Partnership of Lancaster County and directing trauma-informed housing services in New Haven, Connecticut. Her international work in Bolivia focused on program evaluation, gender-based violence prevention, and cross-cultural leadership development. Most recently, Megan has supported her family’s small business transition—leading the digitization of operational systems, organizing financial records, and preparing the business for sale. This experience offered new insight into the emotional and structural complexities of multigenerational transitions, further deepening her capacity to guide others through change with empathy and clarity.

Megan holds a Master of Social Work from Temple University and is fluent in Spanish. She grew up as a Mennonite pastor’s kid in rural Lancaster County and has lived in Bolivia, New Haven, CT, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia. She now lives in Lancaster City with her husband and their dog, Amiguito.

Jen is an experienced Project Manager and Market Research Analyst who plays a key role in collaborating with clients on innovation initiatives from concept to execution. She brings a unique blend of creativity and analytical rigor to every engagement, drawing on years of experience designing and leading market research projects across industries. Jen is skilled at applying a wide range of methodologies—qualitative, quantitative, and ethnographic—to uncover insights that shape strategy and spark innovation.

Experience

Her expertise extends across the full project lifecycle: cultivating client relationships, designing proposals and project frameworks, developing research instruments, leading interviews and fieldwork, facilitating data synthesis workshops, and delivering clear, actionable reports. She has also led large-scale brainstorming and innovation sessions, ensuring participants generate fresh ideas and move toward tangible solutions. With a strong record of client communication, vendor management, and budget oversight, Jen is adept at balancing strategy and logistics to keep projects on track while maintaining a high level of creativity and impact.

Outside of her professional role, Jen is a proud mother of four children, including twins. She enjoys supporting her kids in school activities and events, and she brings the same commitment, organization, and encouragement to her family life that she offers to her work.