Sienna Jackson, the CEO of Nortera.io, walks us through her unexpected shift from entertainment executive to impact strategist. Rather than chasing a title, she followed a thread—registering an LLC, collecting ideas, and finally stepping into work that aligned with her values. Now, she’s helping professionalize the field of social impact by focusing on measurable outcomes, not slogans. From impact modeling to cross-sector coalitions, Sienna shows how complex change starts behind the scenes—with better systems, shared language, and a refusal to settle for surface-level good.Key Highlights of Our Interview:When Pivoting Isn’t a Plan—but a Pattern“I just said, ‘I’m doing social impact now.’ But it was a pattern—an arc I had been on for a while.”She slowly started buying domains, registering an LLC, and collecting ideas. By 2020, she sent one email—“I’m doing social impact now”—and launched into a new chapter that was already quietly in motion. Why ‘Impact’ Needs More Than Good Intentions“Impact is the net positive change rendered as a direct and material result of your actions.”She calls out the performative fluff in corporate social messaging—empty slogans with no metrics behind them. Building the Back-End of Good“I learned about logic models, stakeholder analysis, systems mapping… It’s data modeling, it’s survey design.”Armed with two master’s degrees, Sienna dove deep into IMM—impact management and measurement. She joined Social Value US to help professionalize the field with standards, surveys, and frameworks. Coalitions, Not Silos“The left hand often doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. I see my role as making connections.”Sienna flags a recurring problem: siloed thinking. Her strength lies in speaking both, creating coalitions where collaboration and systems alignment make real change possible.Everyone Has a Piece of the Puzzle “Go find the people who are already doing the work—and support them. That’s where the results come from.”You don’t have to start the movement; just roll up your sleeves and help those already in it. ___________________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: Sienna Jackson --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.EdTech Leadership Awards 2025 Finalist.18 Million+ All-Time Downloads.80+ Countries Reached Daily.Global Top 1.5% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>170,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: Who is Sienna Jackson and what is her background?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist humility for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today's guest is Sienna Jackson, a two-time founder, systems thinker, and someone who's been rewriting the rules since she was a teenager.
We were introduced through a former guest, Chris Hare. And right away, I knew we spoke the same language. Real talk, human-centric ideas, and sharp thinking with no fluff. Sienna started college at 14, interned at the Weinstein Company by 17, and later led music and content at Spine Glass Media.
Today, she is the CEO and co-founder of Notera, a B2B software company helping large enterprises control the risk of employment litigation and automate HR compliance. And yes, AI plays a big role in that. In this two-part series, We talk about chasing excellence without burning out, navigating boardrooms as the only one in the room, and why equity has to be measured if you want it to matter.
Let's get into it. That brings us to a good segue, your social impact work. What made you step into that space in the first place? You mentioned earlier about being like an auditor, someone who helps organizations understand the impact they've made, both the good and the unintended, But let's rewind a little. What drove you to move from the movie-making industry into social impact?
Chapter 2: Why did Sienna Jackson transition from Hollywood to social impact?
And second, how would you describe your own approach to measuring and creating impact?
put that into two buckets. So like when I was in a kind of mid 20s, by the time I was like, yeah, approaching like 27. No, even earlier than that, it would have been a couple years even before that. So as I was like moving on through my career, I was doing all this stuff on the side for free of just like meddling in politics and doing things that were social good oriented.
But even before that, I wanted to be a journalist, right? I wanted to be a citizen of the world and use storytelling through the lens of reporting for good. But I saw that journalism as an industry was already in a very bad way when I pivoted into entertainment. And by the tail end of my time in entertainment, so much had been changing in the industry.
And I would say to like friends, I'd be like, streaming is going to become the new cable. We're going to want to cut the cord streaming. They're going to do bundles. Of course, like four years later, that's exactly what was happening. And I was just ready to pivot.
I think I have a diary entry from like December 2018 of Santa, you need to figure out what you want to do with your life and you've got to like figure it out and just do it. That was 2018. I didn't start the startup, my consultancy until 2020, but I had created the LLC in 2019. I started like, I bought a domain. I started like...
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Chapter 3: How did Sienna Jackson start her career in social impact?
Just subconsciously doing little things that were like my offering to get ready for the pivot. It wasn't like a plan that I had in mind. And then in January of 2020, right after Grammy week, I sent an email to like my top, you know, top couple thousand most relevant industry contacts. I was like, I'm doing social impact now. Okay. And that was it. And then March happened and lockdown started.
And I was like, oh, great timing to start a business. That was the year 2020 was such an inflection year culturally in the United States after the murder of George Floyd. People were calling me up and asking how they should think about things because people already had known me and knew what I was about. They knew I was always interested in the world and current events and
I had my fingers in a lot of different pies and I had relationships and networks outside of the entertainment industry. People already knew that I was eclectic in my areas of interest. So people would hit me up and I said, OK, I'm happy to have the conversation, but you have to pay me for it. And so that's what kicked me off is like one email.
And that kicked off my entire career as an impact consultant. And as I started doing that, like right out the gate, I worked on like 2020 presidential election. So I worked on a big get out the vote campaign that ultimately registered like 114,000 voters. So I was already like right out the gate doing a lot of really cool projects.
And it became quickly apparent to me that people were jumping on the impact campaign.
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Chapter 4: What does Sienna Jackson define as 'impact'?
train this idea and making a lot of claims that were it was just like it was just like marketing shtick it was like hollow marketing shtick or like in these trying times we love you so much and we believe that we shop our products it's for the good of the world and I was just I didn't like it I was not impressed and I would ask myself it's when people talk about change or they talk about making a difference or doing good
How are we defining that? Like people talk impact all the time. Very rarely will they follow it up with a workable definition of what impact is. And impact is simply, it's the net positive change rendered as a direct and material result of your actions.
So if you input an action, you should get a specific reaction or outcome that you can measure, that you can quantify, that you can predict, right? That you can build a model that says, okay, if I am investing... X number of hours at this much money, this much capital, this much this, I should expect this to be the result. And I wasn't seeing that. And I took a while to find
a community of practitioners that were in the space of, it's called IMM, impact management and measurement, right?
Chapter 5: How is Sienna Jackson contributing to impact measurement and management?
People who are actually do things like an SROI analysis, like social investment analysis, who are applying global best practices or accounting standards for how we account for social value, how we build up models that actually give us like a predictive analysis of how things get done for real. So now I'm also a board member at Social Value International's U.S. branch.
So Social Value International is like 60 member countries that used to be the SROI network 20 years ago. But there's all these organizations globally that work together with the U.N. sustainability, sustainable development goals. There's Global Impact Investing Network, which is JIN. There's the Impact Management Project. There's a lot of
academic, nonprofit, NGO institutions, like large institutions, investors, foundations that are all engaged in this work of furthering best practice, identifying global reporting initiatives. So it's like, there's so many now at this point. There's IFRS, there's like SASB and IASB that have their own sustainability accounting standards, right? So that was the area I wanted to play in.
And for me, what was cool is that because of my entertainment background, my background working with creatives, with producing, with creating content that has a lot of impact on people that like grabs people and grabs attention. That was excellent because I could marry that background with this new, very academic work that I was doing. And I thought two master's degrees under my belt.
I've got an MBA and I've also got the master's of science. So this also allowed me this pivot to pursue my more academic career. inclinations anyway. But basically by starting my own thing and being my own boss, it gave me the opportunity to take all the things that I've always been interested in and always cared about and always wanted to see wedded together. And now I get to do that.
My kind of slogan is I'm approaching change at the intersection of cause, culture and capital. So how do we marry those concepts together? How do we leverage capital and how do we influence culture to further a cause. How do these things work together? Like these three C's of pain-taking for me. And that's been like a really cool journey. So now I'm going into like my fifth year company.
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Chapter 6: What are Sienna Jackson’s current projects and future plans?
And right now I'm working on a very large, my largest project yet, which is an international collaboration. I'm executive producing one of the largest non-dilutive funding events on the African continent. Specifically, in Ethiopia. So I'm executive producing the Great Rift Valley Innovation Summit, co-leading that. And that's going to be next year.
So I'll be traveling to Africa for the first time, be watching like a live pitch competition. We're partnered with the UN, the United Nations Development Program for this initiative and a bunch of other public and private sector institutions, large institutions to deliver money right into the hands of Ethiopian entrepreneurs
Founders who are doing great work in healthcare and education, agriculture, and making a big difference in that country, where the median age, by the way, is like 90. It's very hungry, very innovative. A lot of things going on. So I'm excited about what I'm doing in that space.
Wow. Honestly, I was just so drawn in by what you said. I kind of zoned out from coming up with more questions because I was so absorbed in your story. And while listening, someone instantly came to my mind. She is a former guest, actually one of the guests in season one, a founding guest, my classmate from Chicago Booth. She is from France, but currently in Senegal.
Africa, serving as the technical advisor to the government, working on innovation and economic development. I feel like the two of you might really connect. You mentioned Africa, you mentioned Ethiopia being your biggest project yet. Who knows, maybe Senegal could be your next destination.
Hey, I'll take any excuse to hop on a plane and go somewhere new. It's really cool because I think that speaks to just the global nature of this work, which is really great because it's such a large community of people that are so smart and so multi-talented. And everyone is really motivated to make a difference, to make a meaningful, tangible impact.
I often say to people, like I'll point out to my peers, it's every problem that we have in the world is a man-made problem. Which means that there's a man-made solution for every problem by that same token, right? So like we can, we understand the contours of why things are the way they are. Or if something is wrong, that something's amiss, we can understand the landscape and then build solutions.
tactics and strategies and put things into operation that can make a difference. And part of my job is to explicate, first of all, the vision of where we want to go and then the tangibles of how we get there, which is always, it's a lot of project management work I have to do at the end of the day. It's a lot of, it's a lot of ops. It's a lot of operations, actually.
You started this back in 2020. five years now, and so much has changed since then. The worrying, the symptoms, and even the conversations we're having around impact. As you've grown your business and expanded your advisory work, I'm curious, what barriers have you seen or experienced along the way? Impact is a noble cause, no doubt about it. And I imagine a lot of people support it in theory.
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