Some people have a straightforward career path: One degree, one industry, and one upward progression. Some careers, however, evolve like a river cutting through rock: not from any specific blueprint but through constant decisions to keep moving forward, taking each opportunity that comes along until a definite path is carved out of nothing. The career of Jeanan Yasiri Moe fits decidedly into the latter category, having evolved through strategic communications, governance, health care, executive coaching, philanthropy, and higher education.
She currently holds the position of Director of Strategic Communications & Public Affairs at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF). Founded in 1925 in Madison, Wisconsin, WARF has been a nonprofit technology transfer organization for 100 years, transforming university research into societal benefits. Additionally, she is a Certified Executive Coach (ICF-ACC; BCC), Forbes Coaches Council Member, and NACD Certified Director. However, well before those designations were earned, there was only a willingness to walk through doors that other people thought would never be opened to her.
A Foundation Built on Resistance
Growing up in rural Wisconsin as the daughter of a Nebraskan mother and a Middle Eastern father, Yasiri Moe learned early that she’d sometimes have to prove her place before she could occupy it. When told she didn’t “look Wisconsin enough” for on-air television, she didn’t argue the point. She simply outworked it, showing up until the results made the objection irrelevant.
“The driving force was saying ‘yes,’ even when the challenge ahead may have been daunting. It required being committed to lifelong learning and pivoting when opportunities present,” she asserts.
Her academic foundations in business, economics, and human ecology at University Wisconsin-Madison (UW) gave her an interdisciplinary lens she has carried into every subsequent role, a habit of asking what has changed, who is impacted, and how it affects society. Those questions carried her from anchoring news at a NBC affiliate to leading communications for the world’s first university technology transfer organization. Underneath it all, she says, sits one conviction: commitment to positive impact, paired with openness to possibility, tends to take care of the rest.
Learning to Lead Without Having All the Answers
Yasiri Moe has often been called a catalyst for change which is a label she never chased, but one she grew into by leaning into problems others found uncomfortable. When Dean Health System asked her to lead a high-profile practice management team for the largest physician-owned medical group in the country, her first instinct was to point out she wasn’t a clinician. That, it turned out, was exactly the point. The organization wanted a patient-centered problem-solver, not another specialist reinforcing the status quo.
That experience clarified something she now treats as a core belief. “Transformative leadership is not about having all the answers. It’s about creating the conditions for collective courage,” she says.
Resistance to change, she’s come to understand, often isn’t resistance to the change itself, it’s grief over the loss of certainty, identity, or routine. The leaders who navigate it best don’t rush past that discomfort. They hold space for it while still pointing toward what’s possible.
Turning Complex Science into Shared Story
At WARF, Yasiri Moe operates at the intersection of science, entrepreneurship, and public benefit, helping translate university research into commercial breakthroughs whose returns flow back into future discovery. The challenge in communications, as she describes it, isn’t seeking visibility for its own sake – it’s building a narrative that engages scientists, entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, and the public at once, each with different questions and stakes.
Under her leadership, WARF’s thought leadership series, “Innovation and the Wisconsin Idea” and “Wisconsin Ingenuity,” has done exactly that: spotlighting the research emerging from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, generating more than ten million points of social media engagement, and growing the organization’s following tenfold. More importantly, in Yasiri Moe’s view, it has opened doors with industry and investment partners capable of carrying these technologies to the people who actually need them, a living demonstration of the Wisconsin Idea in action.
A Leadership Philosophy That Fits on a Sticky Note
Ask Yasiri Moe to describe her leadership philosophy, and she doesn’t reach for jargon. She reaches for four simple instructions, ones she admits are almost too obvious to need saying until you notice how rarely they’re actually practiced.
“Show up, pay attention, get along, and say thank you. It sounds almost quaint until you realize how rarely it’s practiced,” she states.
Too many leaders, she says, show up physically but not emotionally- listening for gaps rather than understanding, competing when they should collaborate, forgetting that gratitude is itself a form of leadership. Her approach centers on naming reality honestly while still holding space for possibility, because people can tell the difference between being managed and being led. That philosophy carried her through advancing enterprise-wide change at WARF, guiding a health cooperative through the turbulent early days of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and leading board refreshment at Edgewood University. In every case, what moved people forward was the same combination: clear communication, an inclusive process, and visible accountability from leadership.
Staying Relevant Through Constant Learning
For Yasiri Moe, continuous learning isn’t a professional strategy – it’s a personal value. Her credentials reflect that: change management and leadership certifications from Cornell University, cybersecurity risk oversight training from Carnegie Mellon, governance certification through the National Association of Corporate Directors and the Private Directors Association, and executive coaching credentials through the International Coaching Federation and the Center for Credentialing & Education. Her ongoing contribution to the Forbes Coaches Council keeps her in dialogue with dynamic thinkers well beyond Wisconsin.
At WARF, staying ahead of emerging trends is built into the daily rhythm of the work; immersion in emerging science and technology naturally attunes her to where industries, investment priorities, and intellectual property policy are heading. But she credits her network as much as any credential: colleagues watching different corners of the world, willing to share what they see, function as the best early-alert system she knows.
Purpose as the Engine, Not the Extra
Yasiri Moe’s influence extends well past the corporate world into philanthropy, governance, and community development- territory she describes not as a departure from leadership, but as its truest expression.
As founding Executive Director of the UW Center for Nonprofits, her goal wasn’t simply building an academic program; it was validating the essential role nonprofits play as “second responders,” making people and communities whole after crisis. Her patient advocacy work at Dean Health System aimed to make visible a population of healthcare too often overlooked work she went on to share as a model nationwide. Today, she notes, every time a patient registration screen asks whether someone needs help paying for an appointment, she sees the long arc of that effort still in motion.
Her board service tells a similar story: chairing the Give Back Foundation as it grew into a tech platform supporting the Combined Federal Campaign- the world’s largest workplace giving effort, having raised over $520 million since 2016- alongside governance leadership at Edgewood University. She remains an active volunteer today, chairing events for Access Community Health Centers and mentoring women through United Way of Dane County’s Women United initiative.
Earning Credibility, Repeatedly
Some of Yasiri Moe’s most clarifying challenges have come from being underestimated and choosing to answer with results rather than protest. Entering television news with a non-traditional background, sitting in healthcare boardrooms as a non-clinician, leading communications for the world’s first university technology transfer office each required her to earn credibility while doing the work simultaneously. That repetition sharpened her sensitivity to the barriers others face, and a personal commitment to lowering them wherever she has influence to do so. During the ACA rollout at Group Health Cooperative, managing unprecedented membership growth alongside an anxious workforce taught her a lesson she still carries: change management that ignores the emotional and relational dimensions of people’s experience will fail, no matter how sound the strategy looks on paper.
Milestones that Represent Something Larger
Among her many recognitions, several carry particular weight precisely because they reflect collaborative impact rather than individual achievement. Which includes the American College of Medical Practice Executives’ Fred Graham Award for her patient advocacy work at Dean Health System, being named a YWCA Woman of Distinction, and the UW School of Human Ecology’s Excellence in Outreach Award, honouring 26 years in the classroom serving 5,000 students. Her NACD Certified Director designation, ICF and BCC coaching credentials, and an invitation to contribute to the forthcoming book Bridges, Barriers, and Authenticity: Women Navigating Leadership in Higher Education mark a career stage focused on building platforms for others to lead the shift from individual contributor to institutional force multiplier.
Balance as a Discipline, Not an Accident
Yasiri Moe is candid that balance doesn’t happen on its own but it requires the same strategic thinking she applies to organizational change: clarity about values, honesty about limits, and protection of the conditions that allow her to show up fully. That means staying rooted in relationships with her husband, family, friends, and colleagues who knew her before the titles arrived, investing in mentoring the next generation of leaders, and practicing what she preaches as a coach – self-awareness, reflection, and asking for support when needed.
A Vision Rooted in Possibility
Looking ahead, Yasiri Moe’s focus is deepening her work as both executive coach and board director — two roles she sees as sitting at the lever points of organizational transformation. As a coach, she helps leaders find clarity and courage in real time. As a director, she brings perspective earned through decades of strategic communication and organizational change.
But the legacy she hopes to leave isn’t primarily professional.
“I want the people I have worked with, coached, taught, and served to feel that they were seen, that they grew, and that our time together made them more capable and more confident,” she says.
She wants future leaders, women especially, and those from backgrounds the mainstream has historically overlooked to look at what’s possible and know, without question, that it includes them. As she puts it simply: show up, pay attention, get along, say thank you. That simple. That profound.