Jennifer Engelhardt

Jennifer Engelhardt is a principal at EY, where she has over 2 years of experience as a leader in business transformation, organizational change management, culture activation and Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I). Jennifer has dedicated her career to talent development and transformation.  She has led projects across the full HR value chain with a direct focus on linkages to business results. 

Jennifer’s DE&I experience spans business consulting, internal practice development, external community outreach, and academia.  Her work in this space is focused on the user experience—from hire to retire—and is grounded in data-driven decision making. She helps her clients identify, benchmark, and measure DE&I progress against “meaningful” metrics (such as inclusion and equity) versus more easily tracked metrics, such as hiring statistics.  Her DE&I focus extends beyond gender, race and ethnicity to also include veteran status, LGBTQ+, diversity of age, and the growing field of neurodiversity.  Her client projects include working with the OMWI (Office of Minority and Women Inclusion) to assess the efficacy of DE&I programs, encompassing evaluations of programs to promote diversity and ensure the inclusion of minorities, women, and individuals with disabilities.  She has also led HR transformation teams in assessing core elements of the HR value chain, including talent acquisition, performance management, succession planning, payroll, and benefits, identifying points of “talent leakage,” determining root causes of regrettable attrition, and implementing actionable programs to address gaps.  In leading culture activation programs she practices a behavior-oriented approach, which is grounded in the notion that culture is a collection of individual behaviors and mindsets. She has worked with behavior “microaction” tools to build, foster, and sustain an inclusive culture where individuals commit to new behaviors in their daily work tasks.

Jennifer has an undergraduate degree in Russian from the University of Virginia and a masters degree in business administration from the College of William & Mary. Jennifer is an active member of the advisory board for the consulting profession at W&M’s Mason School of Business.