I map how work actually moves through a small team, then build the systems that run it.
Sometimes you just need a fresh set of eyes on it. A different frame for the problem.
Jenna Mortenson Advisory works with small businesses and family businesses — small enough that the owner still knows everyone's name. Every engagement starts in the same place: what actually happens here, in what order, and where does it break down.
From there it is building the systems that fix it, running the operations that keep it moving, and deciding what to take on next. Engagements begin with a fixed length and a clear end point, so you know what you are getting before you commit to more.
What the work is
Workflow & Systems
How work moves through your team, where it breaks, and the systems that fix it.
Operations
Contracts, scheduling, follow-through. The work that has to happen on time.
Strategy
Which bets are worth making, in what order, and what to say no to.
Two lines about what's going on is enough to start.
[email protected]I'm good at the part where a plan has to turn into something that actually happens.
Two things, mostly. I know how work moves through a small group of people: where it stalls, who is quietly holding it together, and which handoff is going to get dropped. And I know how to build the thing that fixes it.
The rest is temperament. I am comfortable with a fixed deadline, an incomplete picture, and a decision that has to get made anyway. That describes most days in a small business, and most of what running operations actually is.
I've spent close to a decade working with people at the moment their professional lives change — first as a mentor at Ithaca College, then for six years as Associate Director of MBA Student Engagement at NYU Stern, New York University's business school in Greenwich Village.
A full-time MBA is a two-year bet. People leave careers they have built, move cities, and take on real debt to change direction. My job was the human side of that. I led full-cycle implementation of orientation programming for 350+ incoming students, owning logistics, programming, and stakeholder coordination end to end.
I oversaw 16 MBA professional clubs, supporting more than 100 student leaders as they ran conferences, fundraising initiatives, and mentorship programs. In practice that meant coaching people through the first real leadership role of their careers, in public, on a deadline. I also worked with senior leadership and student government across the school.
That is operations at scale: fixed deadlines, a few hundred moving parts, and no authority over most of the people involved. It is close to what running a small business feels like. You learn fast how people actually decide when the stakes are personal, the deadline will not move, and nobody has the whole picture.
MBA, New York University Stern School of Business
BS, Ithaca College
How I work
Start with the real question, not the stated one.
Small teams don't need a strategy deck. They need to know what to do Monday.
Plain language. If it takes a framework to explain, it isn't clear yet.
I build the thing, not a plan for the thing.
Start with how the work moves. Most of the other problems sit downstream of that.
Small businesses and family businesses, roughly under 50 employees. The org chart is short, the decisions are personal, and nobody's full-time job is to step back and look at how the whole thing runs.
If you are much bigger than that, I am probably not the right fit, and I will say so.
How the work moves, and what runs it
First I map what actually happens. Who does what, in what order, what gets handed to someone else, and where things stall or get done twice. Most small teams have two or three spots where the same work gets redone because nobody ever wrote down whose job it was.
Then I build the systems that fix it. That includes AI tools where they help, set up to fit the way your team already works instead of asking your team to work differently.
This is not theory for me. I designed and built an AI-powered operations system, with a suite of specialized agents, that runs a live business end to end, and I use it every day.
The day-to-day machinery
Contracts, scheduling, vendors, follow-through. The work that has to happen on time whether or not anyone has the time for it, and the first thing to slip when a small team gets busy. I set it up so it keeps running without depending on someone remembering.
Which bets are worth making
What to take on this year, what to say no to, and in what order. Small teams lose more time doing three things halfway than they lose picking the wrong one.
We start with a first engagement of a fixed length, with a clear end point and something you keep: a map of how your work moves today, plus the specific changes and systems to put in place.
If it makes sense to keep going after that, we can set up an ongoing retainer. In that order, not the other way around.
Before any of that, we do a 30-minute intro call at no charge, to work out together whether there is a fit.
Rates on request.
Coaching and mentorship
I work with individuals going through professional transitions: a job change, a new leadership role, a decision they cannot get clear on. I have spent close to a decade doing this, most of it at NYU Stern with MBA students making the hardest professional decisions of their lives.
It is a conversation, not a program. If that is what you are after, write to me.
Two lines about your business is enough to start.
[email protected]Write to me.
Start with a 30-minute intro call. No charge, nothing to prepare. I will ask what is going on, tell you what I think the real problem is, and we will both find out whether it makes sense to work together.
To set one up, email me two lines: what you do, and what is not working. There is no form to fill out.
Prefer that I call you? Include your phone number and I will.