Originally broadcast at 10:30 a.m. ET Wednesday, August 4, 2021.

Jackie Acho founded The Acho Group, a strategy and leadership consulting firm, in 2005. She has worked for technology, industrial, academic, nonprofit, and economic development clients on a variety of issues, with particular focus on growth and innovation, strategy, and leadership development for more than 25 years. Her current work includes empathy-centered cultural transformation with the Cleveland Police, which will be the focus of her presentation as part of the Chautauqua Lecture Series.

Acho and her colleagues write about how leaders can create an organizational Currency of Empathy at currencyofempathy.com; at The Acho Group, her team helps leaders and organizations recover their humanity and entrepreneurial spirit. She is the author of Currency of Empathy — The Secret to Thriving in Business & Life. Prior to founding The Acho Group, she was a partner of McKinsey & Company, and has taught in the Masters of Finance Program at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management.

Among her honors is being named a “top 40 under 40” by Crain’s Cleveland Business Magazine and “one of the 500 most influential women in Northeast Ohio” by Northern Ohio Live magazine, and a 2019 Women Living STEM honoree. She was member of the Leadership Cleveland Class of 2012 and a YWCA Wisdom Circles Mentor, and currently serves on the board of Hyperion Materials and Technology, a KKR company.

Acho received her master's degree and Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with highest honors from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In 2012, she completed the four-year program of Theological Education by Extension/Education for Ministry through Sewanee University.

This program is made possible by the Malcolm Anderson Lecture Fund.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.