Some people are born wanting to dig.

I wanted to be a paleontologist. An archaeologist. A zoologist. I wanted to travel, investigate, uncover things hidden beneath the surface, and understand how complex systems actually work.

I was told that wasn’t practical.

So I became a teacher — because learning felt like the closest honest container for the way my mind works. And for years, I found ways to do the digging anyway. When I worked in higher education, I started calling myself an Assessment Archaeologist — because when I looked at data, I wasn’t just reading numbers. I was reading the layers. Diagnosing what was buried underneath struggling outcomes: the gaps in curriculum, the fractures in systems, the places where mission and reality had quietly come apart.

That instinct never left. It just needed the right form.

MADE is that form.

What I Actually Do

I help mission-driven organizations see what’s invisible to them.

Not because they aren’t paying attention — but because when you’re inside a system, the friction becomes background noise. The gap between what your organization says it is and what people actually experience closes slowly, quietly, and then all at once.

I work with organizations — especially museums, zoos, educational institutions, and civic spaces — where people care deeply, complexity is high, and something underneath the surface keeps pulling the mission off course.

My work isn’t about fixing you. It’s about helping you see clearly — and then building the alignment, systems, and shared language to move forward with intention.

A Little More About Me

When kids ask me what I want to be when I grow up, I still say paleontologist. They tell me I can’t change what I am anymore.

I disagree.

MADE is my grown-up way of doing exactly what I always wanted to do: go to interesting places, study complex living systems, excavate what’s hidden, and help things that matter survive and thrive.

Outside of work I’m most myself barefoot outside, connecting with animals, diving into science and art, making music, and laughing with people I love. That groundedness — curiosity, presence, joy — is what I bring into every room and every engagement.

Only the best, 

Jenn Babcock 

Founder, The MADE Collection LLC