About Jason

My mom used to say that the best thing you can give someone is your full attention. She was a high school teacher in Ohio, and she meant it literally, she gave it to her students every single day. I watched her do it growing up, and somewhere along the way, it became the thing I valued most too. I just didn't know yet that it would become my life's work. I started working at 15. Retail, mostly, the kind of jobs where you're on your feet all day, helping strangers figure out what they need. I was never that good at pushing a sale, but what I was good at was slowing down, getting curious, and actually listening. Not just to what someone was saying, but sometimes to what they weren't. What was important, what motivated them! That instinct took me further than I ever expected. By my mid-twenties I was leading a retail store doing $10–15 million a year. Then Apple came calling, and everything changed. I opened two stores, led teams of over 100 people, and stood on the floor the day the iPhone launched. It was electric. But the thing I remember most from those years isn't the products, it's the people, the conversations. The moments when someone walked in frustrated or uncertain, and walked out feeling like they had a path forward. I was coaching. I just didn't have the word for it yet. That realization eventually led me from Apple's stores to their corporate team in California, and then to LinkedIn, where I spent five years designing learning experiences for a company growing faster than anyone could keep up with. After that, I built L&D functions from the ground up at Upwork and a handful of other organizations, each one a chance to create something that actually moved people, not just checked a box. And then I built something for myself. Refine Talent Development.