Leaders & Achievers 2022
MARY JO “MJ” KAPLAN
Founder and CEO, Kaplan Consulting LLC
MARY JO “MJ” KAPLAN, founder and CEO of Narragansett-based Kaplan Consulting LLC, feels her firm is at the beginning of a new age but she is unsure how things will change in the long run.
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“We’re trying to find ways to treat people in a more human-centered, holistic way,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan’s firm specializes in executive leadership, strategy and the future of work. The dramatic changes brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic have brought the latter into sharp focus.
Certainly, business thinkers had been considering how the nature of work and organizations are changing for some time now, Kaplan said. That was particularly true for startups that didn’t have to concern themselves with decades of tradition or a preexisting hierarchy.
Organizations often come to Kaplan when they have specific issues, she said. When the pandemic struck, the immediate goal, Kaplan said, was how to shift to remote working.
“So many things were changing so fast,” she said. “Companies had to learn how to work differently almost immediately.’’
Now, she said, the question organizational leaders have to ask is what makes sense going forward. For many companies, Kaplan said, the old industrial model no longer works.
‘We’re trying to find ways to treat people in a more human-centered, holistic way.’
“There’s no one-size-fits-all,” she said. “A lot depends on the kind of work that’s being done, the locations, who is in the workforce, what they’re doing day to day … so how do you set up a new framework that’s fair to everyone?”
Kaplan was born in Ohio and initially came to Rhode Island to attend Brown University, where she graduated in 1982. In 2013 she took a public policy Fulbright Fellowship in New Zealand, which led to co-founding a software service company.
Kaplan has consulted for organizations across a wide variety of sectors, including community nonprofits, educational institutions, foundations and corporations such as Gilbane Building Co. and the Hudson Bay Co. She also serves on a number of boards, including for R.I. Commerce Corp. and Social Enterprise Greenhouse.
“I prefer to work with companies and organizations that are thinking about how to have a positive impact on their communities,” Kaplan said. Many younger workers, she said, are feeling the same way and are acutely concerned with finding a sense of purpose in their work.
