Jessica Orkin,
Chief Executive Officer

Since joining SYPartners in 2013, Jessica Orkin has been a trusted partner to CEOs and boards steering through defining moments—guiding companies including Airbnb, AARP, the Aspen Institute, Hyatt, the Obama Foundation, Ralph Lauren, Starbucks, and UnitedHealthcare to align around bold visions and build the human systems to realize them.

Jessica is known for bringing a different lens to leadership—one that fuses creative audacity with strategic clarity and sees culture as a source of competitive advantage. She’s a frequent speaker on emergent leadership, organizational courage, and purpose-aligned growth in an era of massive uncertainty and opportunity.

She began her career in public policy, working with the City of New York, the Ford Foundation, and policy think tanks before turning her focus to the intersection of human behavior, design, and systemic change.

Jessica divides her time between New York, Portugal, and the many cities where SYP’s partners and clients are shaping the future. She serves on the board of urban strategy and design firm Gehl and is a senior advisor to Proto Collective and beta-i.

As CEO of SYPartners, Jessica leads business transformation fueled by humanity, creativity, and purpose—both for clients and for the firm itself.