Sheri Jacobs

Sheri Jacobs is the founder and CEO of Avenue M Group, an independent research and consulting firm she launched more than 16 years ago. Under her leadership, Avenue M has worked with over 300 organizations and surveyed nearly half a million professionals across healthcare, education, financial services, technology, manufacturing, and professional services, building one of the largest proprietary datasets on how people navigate change, risk, and innovation.

Her research focuses on a counterintuitive question: why do people with more freedom often produce less innovation than those operating under real constraints? Drawing on more than a million data points, Sheri has identified the conditions that allow individuals to experiment, take smart risks, and turn ideas into action, along with the structural patterns that quietly shut creativity down. 

Sheri is a three-time bestselling author. Her latest book, The Unexpected Power of Boundaries: Rethinking the Rules, Risks, and Real Drivers of Innovation (Amplify Publishing, 2026), debuted at #1 on Amazon in both Technology and Innovation. Her earlier books, including The Art of Membership and Pivot Point, have become standard references in their fields.

Outside her research, Sheri is an award-winning wildlife photographer. She has traveled to all seven continents, with expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica shaping much of her recent work. Photographing wildlife in extreme environments has reinforced what her research keeps surfacing: patience, preparation, and working within hard limits are what make the unexpected moments possible. She lives in Denver with her three rescue dogs.