About
I’m Jessica Valand, founder of Veikart Advising. I work with organizations to strengthen the systems shaping economic mobility and security, particularly through education, employment and work supports, and public benefits. Over the past two decades, my career has spanned workforce and economic development, social safety-net programs, career pathways development, and public and philanthropic investments at the local, state, and national levels.
My first professional roles as a rural high school teacher and in an unemployment office coordinating job training programs put me close to people at pivotal opportunity moments in their lives, and changed how I think about economic mobility. I saw so many talented, determined individuals struggle, not because they lacked ability or effort, but because the systems around them were hard to navigate, poorly designed, and not oriented to outcomes that mattered in real lives. Experiencing systems that fell short early on set the course for the rest of my career. After completing a graduate degree in development economics, I spent over two decades focused on improving how opportunity systems function, so they deliver better results for the people they are meant to serve, and for the people responsible for running them.
My career has largely been in the public sector, and with government-adjacent national organizations. I have advised executives and governor's offices, been deep in the weeds on program data, built cross-sector public partnerships, designed randomized controlled trials, administered flagship workforce and job training programs, managed multimillion-dollar philanthropic and publicly funded portfolios, and helped agencies turn evidence into strategies they can actually use. Over the course of my career, I have found that identifying gaps in the system, and driving innovative approaches to close those gaps, is where I can bring the most value, and also where I find the most purpose (resume available upon request).
As a consultant, I often work with clients when the path forward is unclear or when efforts are not translating into outcomes, and an expert external perspective is needed (see services for details). What I bring is a practical view of how change happens within complex systems. I understand how services are delivered on the ground, I know how public systems operate, and I care as deeply about evidence as I do practitioner insight. I look for what is getting in the way, what can be fixed, and what is realistic given policy, funding, and operational constraints. I work with clients to name the destination, and collaborate to chart the path to get there.
I think of this mix of skills as map-making. Economic security and mobility systems should lead to tangible results in the lives of the people using them, but this is not always the case. Systems (and people) are prone to drift: priorities multiply, processes layer on, and the destination can fade from view. My role is to help clients orient, name their direction, avoid roadblocks, and move with purpose.
Let's map the path forward together.