The Team

Lauren Ovans, SPHR

Founder and Principal Consultant

Lauren Ovans is a seasoned HR and operations strategist with 15+ years of experience turning people challenges into growth opportunities.

She’s empowered Fortune 500 companies, innovative startups, and mission-driven organizations by bringing clarity, structure, and results to every engagement.

What She Does:

Founded ALO Perspective to deliver executive-level HR support to small and mid-sized businesses—without the overhead.

Her expertise includes:

  • Employee relations

  • Performance management

  • Organizational design

  • Strategic workforce planning

Why You’ll Love Working With Her:

  • Empathy meets business insight: Lauren skillfully blends a caring approach with sharp business acumen.

  • Trusted by leaders across industries to build strong teams and empower confident talent decisions.

Fun Facts:

  • Currently completing her MBA at Purdue University – always leveling up!

  • Fitness junkie and Dave Matthews Band fan.

Amy McDuffie-Blackett, PCC

Gallup Certified Strengths Coach | Certified Confidence Coach

Amy McDuffie-Blackett is a passionate career and strengths coach who helps people and organizations thrive. With over 25 years of experience, she’s transformed talent challenges into growth opportunities.

She’s empowered diverse organizations—from technology and healthcare to government—by designing impactful coaching programs and facilitating strengths workshops that drive engagement and performance.

What She Does: 

Amy helps organizations build engaged, high-performing teams and professionals design careers they love.

As a Gallup-Certified Strengths Coach and Career Exploration Strategist, she guides individuals and teams to focus on what’s right with them, leveraging their unique strengths to unlock potential and achieve meaningful results.

Her expertise includes:

Strengths-based team development: creating cultures of engagement, trust, and collaboration that drive high performance.

Career exploration & transitions: helping professionals identify fulfilling roles and environments where they can thrive.

Why You’ll Love Working With Her: 

Amy brings warmth, insight, and energy to every coaching conversation. She builds trust quickly, makes people feel seen and valued, and creates spaces where confidence and growth flourish. Her intuitive ability to connect, communicate, and inspire helps individuals and teams unlock their potential—and organizations rely on her to turn talent into impact.

Fun Fact:

Her top 5 strengths are Communication, Woo, Empathy, Includer, and Positivity.

Whitney Connelly, MBA, HCS

Talent & HR Strategy Consultant | 1: 1 Resume & Career Coach

Whitney Connelly is a seasoned Talent/HR consultant with 16+ years of experience identifying talent challenges and transforming them into opportunities for growth and development. 

She’s empowered a diverse set of organizations – from Fortune 500 to healthcare to Big 4 accounting – by offering insights for organizations to optimize the unique strengths of their workforce enabling positive impact to team culture and operational success.

What She Does:

Builds teams’ culture and engagement by identifying the right skillsets and proficiencies needed to deliver high-impact work. Supports both business leaders and staff alike via one-on-one coaching, competency assessments, performance management, HR business partnership to achieve both individual career aspirations while driving business success.

Her expertise includes:

  • Competency modeling

  • Performance management

  • 1:1 Career coaching and development

  • Onboarding and Training facilitation

  • HR Business Partnership

  • SOP and Handbook documentation

Why You’ll Love Working with Her:

  • Energy meets empathy meets talent insights: Whitney artfully brings her unique blend of energy and a “people first” approach to developing insightful recommendations to business leaders.

  • Builds personal, trusting relationships with both staff and leaders across industries to build strong partnerships leading to individual and business success.

Fun Facts:

  • Completed both her undergraduate and her MBA program each more than a semester early.  (Why she was in such a rush for the “real world”, we still aren’t sure…)

  • She is a strong advocate of prioritizing mental health; for Whitney, that means you’ll often find her in the bootcamp-style workouts she loves, connecting with friends, or spending quality time with her family.