Jada Kent is a director with Baker Tilly’s public sector human capital advisory practice, has been with the firm since 2015. She is experienced and passionate about providing human capital and management consulting services to public sector clients. Jada has experience delivering a variety of services related to job classification, compensation, executive recruitment and organizational management to local government organizations across the country. She leads the compensation consulting practice within the public sector advisory practice.
Formerly, Jada served active duty as a public affairs specialist with the seventh Mobile Public Affairs Detachment in the United States Army and with the 136th Airlift Wing in the Texas Air National Guard.
- Serves as a subject matter specialist in public sector compensation by providing guidance and advisory to clients regarding strategy, legal compliance and competitiveness
- Utilizes industry best practices to provide salary gap analysis using data collected through a custom market survey. This includes assisting clients in defining their competitive labor market and identifying their desired position in the market
- Provides client training and assistance in the development of a formal or informal compensation philosophy
- Conducts compensation plan and pay policy reviews to ensure compliance with FLSA, ADA, EEOC, Pay Equity and more, to include state and local regulations
- Assists clients with establishing/recalibrating internal equity by conducting job evaluation, this includes a review of job titles as well as the need for position consolidation or reclassification
- Experienced in developing new base pay structure(s) and revising existing structures to ensure clients are competitive in attracting and retaining necessary talent
- Collaborates with clients to establish creative classification and compensation plan implementation solutions, including scenarios that combat pay equity and/or pay compression issues, as well as a costing analysis for budgeting purposes
- Providing compensation services to cities, counties, state legislatures, judicial branches, libraries, housing authorities, metropolitan planning organizations (MPO), municipal associations, power agencies, public schools (K-12), toll/bridge authority, transportation authorities and commissions, utilities and water/wastewater authorities
- North Texas Compensation Association (NTCA)
- World at Work, Total Rewards Association
- Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM)
- International Public Management Association for Human Resources (IPMA-HR)
- “Keys to conducting a successful market survey,” Indiana Water Environment Association (IWEA) Annual Conference, August 2022
- “Managing an Evolving Workforce,” Crossroads of American Leadership Summit, June 2022
- “Don’t Leave! Keeping Employees in a Tight Labor Market,” IPMA-HR Central Region Conference, June 2022
- “Balancing Internal Equity & Market Competitiveness in the Public Sector,” North Texas Compensation Association, Virtual Luncheon, April 2022
- “Proactively Gain Buy-In for a Classification and Compensation Study: Tips and Ideas,” ElectriCities of North Carolina, Connection Summit 2022
- “Your organization’s compensation philosophy: what is it, what should it contain, and why is it important?” Accelerated Indiana Municipalities Ideas Summit 2021
- “Implementing a successful Classification and Compensation Study,” Wisconsin GFOA Human Resources Conference, September 2021
- “In a World Competing for Hard-to-find Talent, Skill-Based Pay can be your Secret Weapon,” Illinois County/County Management Association Newsletter, September 2021
- “Salary benchmarking: selecting peer organizations for comparison,” bakertilly.com 2021
- Panelist on “Talent management in a post-pandemic world,” Resiliency on the Rise: Baker Tilly Public Sector Virtual Summit, June 2021
- “Don’t be a (title) creep,” bakertilly.com 2021
- “Keeping classification and compensation up-to-date during COVID-19,” CommuniTIES: A Baker Tilly public sector podcast, October 2020
- Panelist on “How to attract and retain talent in organizations,” University of Texas at Dallas, Public & Non-profit Management Program 2020
- Certified Compensation Professional (CCP)
Location
Frisco, TX
Education
Master of Public Administration (MPA)
University of Texas – Dallas
Bachelor of Arts, U.S. history
University of North Texas
