Jen Medearis Costello, MS comes to Connexus with understanding and insight from 20 years of experience inside public health, health care, human services and education agencies at the local, regional and federal levels.

 

With a fresh perspective and knowledge of best practices, Jen partners with you to find practical solutions tailored to your agency or collaboration. She's driven by her guiding principles of equity, partnership, authenticity, and creating impactful change. 

 

Before launching Connexus, Jen directed strategy and planning at Piedmont Health Services, one of NC’s oldest and largest federally-qualified health center organizations. There she designed and led multiple new efforts to increase collaboration inside and outside PHS, as well as expand access and equity. Previously, she teamed with health care providers, researchers and leaders to identify novel approaches to care at UNC Health Care's Center for Innovation. In Washington, D.C., she worked at The Lewin Group as a consultant to the federal Head Start program and as a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools. Alongside her work at Connexus, she is an adjunct instructor at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health where she teaches Leading from the Inside-Out, which examines advancing equity by recognizing and addressing bias in organizations, and was voted by students to receive the Teaching Innovation Award in 2021-2022.

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​Jen has a Masters of Science in Maternal and Child Health from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.