Katelyn Jones, PhD

I've spent the last fifteen years examining how organizations make decisions, and designing better ways for them to do so. My work has always centered on the question: What enables organizations to make decisions that create the outcomes they value most?

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Early in my career, I approached this question as a researcher. During my doctoral work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, I studied decision-making inside international organizations, exploring how information, power, and institutional structures shape the choices leaders make—and how those choices affect people far beyond the rooms where they're made.

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Eventually, I wanted to move beyond studying decisions. I wanted to be responsible for making them.

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Over the next decade, I served in senior leadership roles at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, and the YMCA of Metropolitan Chicago, leading enterprise-wide impact and outcomes measurement strategies. I worked alongside executive teams navigating complex decisions about growth, resource allocation, organizational change, and long-term strategy. I also independently advised leaders across sectors as they worked through high-stakes strategic challenges.

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Across every organization I worked with, I saw the same pattern: the greatest barrier to better decisions is not the people, but rather the systems. Systems and strategies used to support decisions do not evolve alongside the organization.

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That insight became the foundation of Noetic.

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Every organization has a decision infrastructure: the formal and informal systems that shape how information flows. These systems develop over time, but they are often inherited rather than intentionally designed to support the organization’s current context and needs. As leaders navigate growth, AI adoption, and increasing complexity, the need to intentionally design how decisions happen becomes more important than ever.

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At Noetic, I partner with executives and leadership teams to strengthen that decision infrastructure. Together, we examine how decisions are currently made, identify where processes and assumptions create barriers, and build practical frameworks that help leaders make better decisions again and again.

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Teaching has remained an important part of this work. I've taught at Barnard College-Columbia University, the University of Richmond, and the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, and I currently teach Decision Strategy and executive education to graduate and post-graduate students at Loyola University Chicago's Quinlan School of Business. Whether in a classroom or a boardroom, my work centers on helping people think more clearly about complex challenges and turn insight into action.

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I'm based in Chicago, where I also serve as Board Chair of Joel Hall Dancers & Center.