Our Story
We've spent our careers as doers —building teams, scaling organizations, and turning ambitious visions into sustainable realities.
Along the way, we noticed something: we often feel very very alone!!!
Helia began with a simple question that co-founders Jess Skylar and Liz Mills asked themselves: What if we focus on doers - the folks making it happen in every org? What if we could harness the beauty of coffee shop convos and informal connections to help organizations figure out the "how" of their biggest challenges?
Today, that question drives everything we do—from our hands-on partnerships to our growing library of stories and resources to our collective of amazing doers. We believe in the power of 'been there, done that' wisdom.
Helia - the Library, Collective and Consulting - was created to be your Partner in How - the resource we always wished existed! It’s a place that brings humanity, experience, tools and a willingness to roll up our sleeves and put our hands on keyboards to help us all move forward.
Want to learn more? Check out our Strategic Plan (inspired by Libby’s Strategic Planning approach in our Library!)
Meet our Team
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Jess Skylar
Twenty years in and Jess still loves helping turn big ideas into reality. Throughout her career, she's partnered with mission-driven organizations across education, tech, food, financial services, and social impact to be part of building a world we all want to live in. Whether helping scale Revolution Foods from $14M to $170M, co-building Think of Us to be a national systems change leader (including raising nearly $50M through the Audacious Project), or launching one of the first social impact investing firms with HIP Investor, she loves thinking big and then getting into the weeds to make things happen. Now, she's co-creating Helia Collective to be what she always wanted in the world - a practical partner providing hands-on support that all organizations can turn to when they're stuck.
When she's not working with great organizations, you'll find her in sunny Los Angeles hanging with her teenage kids, writing her newsletter Loving Jess, hiking with her two 100ish pound pups, or reading in her yard, always rooting for the Dodgers and often with a breakfast burrito or mug of tea in her hand.
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Connie Mistler-Ferguson
Connie is a project manager at heart, with a passion for building and driving the kind of learning experiences and people systems that help mission-driven people thrive. She’s a firm believer that investing in people is the secret sauce to an impactful organization. Over the last decade, across workforce development, education, and health, she’s worked to make training more impactful and operations more human-centered. At Year Up, she led org-wide onboarding for hundreds of new staff, built and scaled people manager and career development programs, and launched a 3-year Predictive Index strategy to strengthen team effectiveness. Now, she’s thrilled to join the Helia team as a Fractional Chief of Staff to co-build a Helia Library that empowers doers everywhere.
Connie recently moved to Denver after 6 years in San Francisco and an adventure across Southeast Asia! Outside of videoconferences and Notion databases, she’s probably getting her hands dirty with a new recipe, supervising her dog Tuna’s quest to eradicate the roof of bugs, or plotting “structured fun” for her next friend-hang.
Snapshot - Our Founders’ Experience
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Scaling Systems Change
We helped transform Think of Us from a $700K startup to a $14M leader in child welfare innovation.
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Scaling Healthy Food Access
Before Helia, Jess helped drive Revolution Foods' growth from $14M to $170M, expanding nationwide, improving margins, and maintaining mission impact.
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Pioneering Impact Investing
Before Helia, Jess helped grow HIP Investor from concept to industry pioneer, building infrastructure, tools, and frameworks shaping impact investing.