AGE:33
POSITION: President and co-founder of Innovation Partners International
LIFELONG AMBITION: To take my work and family to Africa for several months to a year
FAVORITE BOOK: “A Prayer for Owen Meany,” by John Irving
GUILTY PLEASURE: “Business Meetings” at the beach with my husband/partner, sans children
Jen Hetzel Silbert is a subscriber to the school of appreciative inquiry, an approach to change that centers on building organizations on what works, not what doesn’t. And by co-founding her own consulting firm with her husband, she has done just that.
Hetzel Silbert is president of Innovation Partners International, a management consulting and training firm focused on promoting positive change in organizations and communities. As an advocate of appreciative inquiry, Silbert tries to build on the positive attributes of people, situations and organizations by asking questions to elicit those responses that can be used to build positive relationships. Solving problems is less about placing blame than it is about discovering, dreaming, designing and realizing a goal, creating a new destiny. It is change that leaves those who have been changed in a better place.
She is so invested in the process, that Hetzel Silbert has been a guest speaker, consultant, trainer and author on the topic.
But aside from her professional work, Hetzel Silbert has worked to better the world around her.
According to her resume, she led a year-long peace-building and community-development initiative in Guyana in partnership with the United Nations. Efforts there included the hosting of summits that involved more than 100 civil society organizations, government officials and tribal officers. Topics included developing individual and organizational capacity around positive approaches to peace building in the wake a violent presidential election.
Asked who the most influential person to her career has been, Hetzel Silbert pointed out Jane Magruder Watkins, an organizational consultant considered a pioneering leader of the appreciated inquiry concept. In her 40 Under Forty application, she wrote that her experience with Magruder Watkins helped mold who she is and how she runs her company.
“Having studied and worked with Jane, I learned the power of asking questions that focus on possibilities over problems; what you ask determines what you find,” Hetzel Silbert wrote. “More than a way of working, this has become my way of life.”
