Consultant Spotlight: Jennifer Jenkins, Editorial Services

If someone asked you to draw a portrait of a beloved and influential drama teacher for his memorial service, and you weren’t exactly a trained portrait artist, what would you say?  
  
If you were Jennifer Jenkins, you would say, “Yes! I’d be honored!” (Even if, moments later, you might start to wonder if your skills could ever do this great man justice.)    

Indeed, Jennifer’s can-do moxie gets her into these kinds of pickles often, but she always pulls through. Early in her marriage, she decided she could repair the couple’s “1,000-year-old” dishwasher. Not only did she succeed, she then went on to fix their equally ancient washer and a defunct dryer.  
  
“I’m a combination of creativity, perfectionism, and a massive amount of stubborn,” she explains. “If something needs to get done — and particularly if I have a passion for it — I’ll take it on, even if, at the outset, I don’t know exactly how I’m going to do it.”  

While her stubbornness won’t let her say “no can do,” her other attributes ensure she’ll succeed. “My creativity helps solve problems along the way, and my perfectionism makes sure the job’s done right,” she says.   

An editorial services pro, Jennifer’s most recent project with Collabry entailed editing and rewriting internal web pages for a major financial firm. “I used my perfectionism skills to pull out essential information, then used my creativity skills to rewrite the info to make it more user friendly for the reps who would eventually be depending on it,” she says.  

She especially loves taking on challenges and writing about topics — like finance or technology — that aren’t always easy for the general reader to grasp. In her most recent work, she took a deep dive into the finance sector to turn a complex topic into something that was compelling and easy to read.  

While Jennifer’s clients often hire her for her expertise, they soon find she’s a lot of fun to be around. “I come from a large Italian family,” she says. “When we were kids, whenever we got into trouble, we knew there would be like 100 uncles and aunts and grandmothers who would know about it.”  
She and her siblings would use humor to diffuse the situation. “Once we got them laughing, we’d know we weren’t going to be in trouble anymore.”  

While Jennifer’s days of youthful hijinks are over, she still uses humor to defang potentially tense moments. “When the going gets tough, with tight deadlines, heavy workloads, and stressful stretches of time, I’m good at coming up with a few laugh-out-loud moments that helps everyone relax a bit and refocus.”  

 Indeed, for Jennifer, the road to success is paved with a grit, determination, talent, and a few LOLs along the way.  
And, by the way, that portrait of the beloved drama teacher is currently hanging outside of the theater that has been dedicated in his honor.