Jacqueline Acho, Ph.D.

Jackie teaching yoga to the Cleveland Police

Jackie was the President of The Acho Group, a strategy and leadership consulting firm. Prior to founding The Acho Group in 2005, she was a Partner of McKinsey & Company. She has worked for technology, industrial, academic, nonprofit, and economic development clients on a variety of issues, with particular focus on growth and innovation, strategy, and leadership development for 25 years. Past work also includes empathy-centered cultural transformation with the Cleveland Police. 

Jackie received her master’s degree and Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in chemistry with highest honors from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Jackie was named one of the “top 40 under 40” by Crain’s Cleveland Business Magazine and “one of the 500 most influential women in Northeast Ohio” by Northern Ohio Live magazine. She was member of the Leadership Cleveland Class of 2012 and a YWCA Wisdom Circles Mentor. Jackie currently serves on the Board of Hyperion Materials & Technology, a KKR company. She has served on the Boards of The National Inventors Hall of Fame, The Urban League of Greater Cleveland, Jumpstart, Inc., Entrepreneur’s EDGE, the Technology Commercialization Steering Committee of Case Western Reserve University, the Wright Center for Sensor Systems, and the Advisory Boards of the Northeast Ohio Technology Council, the Generation Foundation, and Industrial Transport. Jackie was also a member of the Cleveland Forward Cities Council, including the Aspen Institute.

Jackie has taught “Finance in the Real World” in the Masters of Finance Program at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, where she continues to be a guest speaker on topics including: leadership, strategy, and innovation.   Jackie is a featured speaker in the Massively Open Online Course (MOOC) Beyond Silicon Valley: Growing Entrepreneurship in Transitioning Economies.

Jackie and her colleagues have written about how leaders can create an organizational Currency of Empathy® at currencyofempathy.com and have a proprietary Currency of Empathy^®/Culture of Innovation^® diagnostic to help leaders and organizations recover their humanity and entrepreneurial spirit. In October 2014, she gave the TEDx talk: A Good Day’s Work Requires Empathy. Jackie served as a TEDx coach in 2015 and was on the Lead Speaker Curation team for 2016 TEDxCSU. She recently published the book: Currency of Empathy: The Secret to Thriving in Business & Life.

In 2012, Jackie completed the 4-year program of Theological Education by Extension/Education for Ministry through Sewanee University and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights where she has served as Senior Warden of the Vestry. She was a certified yoga teacher, with a special focus on trauma-informed healing to police and other first-responders.

She wrote, consulted, and spoke about the power of empathy and her first book, “Currency of Empathy: The Secret to Thriving in Business & Life,” paints a vision of a better way to live and work. Upon her diagnosis of ovarian cancer in February 2020, she wrote about her experience with extraordinary insight, grace and beauty. “Cancer Culture: Fixing the Landscape by Infusing Empathy,” is the result of those writings. Jackie passed away at home in hospice care on December 22, 2022.