Jessica Clemons is a Managing Director with Accenture Strategy. As a strategic C-suite advisor with over 20 years of experience leading strategic transformation programs and operating model shifts for Fortune 500 and high-growth companies, Jessica has been instrumental in scaling businesses and delivering long-term value. Jessica’s pragmatic leadership approach is marked by her ability to take a “How Might We” approach to foster innovation, while designing solutions that optimize resources and develop talent. She is known as an advocate and sponsor for junior resources in the workplace and for disenfranchised populations in the community.
Jessica earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering in Industrial & Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan and an Executive MBA from the Ross School of Business. Early in her career, she applied her engineering skills in the automotive industry, where she designed assembly processes and manufacturing plant layouts, improving efficiency, ergonomics, and materials management, resulting in a doubling of the manufacturing capacity of a plant. She then moved to the services industry, where she designed customer service processes, organization, and training to improve experience and efficiency. Jessica later spent 10 years at Ernst & Young and Capgemini designing and implementing shared services organizations from the ground up, including front-office and back-office functions, and technology platforms such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), driving efficiency and reducing operating margin.
She launched a boutique consulting firm focused on small, high-growth businesses, where she led executive alignment and growth strategy programs and helped startups scale. Next, she joined CareTech Solutions, an IT outsourcer for hospitals, where she transformed IT Help Desk operations and enabled unprecedented growth, increasing the client portfolio by over 50% in one year. She joined Accenture in 2012, where she is now a Managing Director and leader in Operating Model Strategy and Organization Design.
Notable achievements include a consumer health company where she spearheaded the formation of the first global business services contact center, improving experience, efficiency, and effectiveness for HR, Finance, and Procurement as part of a $1B savings initiative. Her partnership with client leadership co-created a vision and roadmap to leapfrog to leading-edge capabilities and impact. The center was innovative in its strategy and proved to be both transformational and sustainable when it withstood the challenge of the COVID pandemic and maintained operations and service levels without disruption. For a large U.S. health payer organization, Jessica assessed and improved the service function operating model, resulting in improvements in attrition, service levels, employee satisfaction, and over $50M improvement in operating costs.
Jessica is a sought-after speaker on numerous topics, including resiliency, leadership, and advocacy. In addition to her corporate work, Jessica is deeply committed to supporting people initiatives and holds leadership positions with Accenture corporate citizenship, pro bono, and skills-based volunteer programs with non-profits in Southern California. She is the Executive Sponsor of the Accenture SoCal Social Justice Pillar, which has launched volunteer initiatives and fundraisers for over a dozen causes including the Prison Library Project and Thomas House Family Shelter. As Executive Sponsor for the Accenture SoCal Strategy Community, she mentors women and men on both career growth and purposeful impact. Guided by a strong sense of service, she strives to make a long-term, positive impact on the personal and professional well-being of the underserved.
