Jared Montoya, PhD, Professor of Leadership Studies, and former student David Hill (MS 2013, PhD 2019) have created an app to help businesses – “WeGood?” – which is available in the Apple Store.
“The overall goal of the app is to help organizations to engage and retain their employees,” said Dr. Montoya, Leadership Studies Program Chair. “The initial testing will be for food service, healthcare, retail and manufacturing, but I imagine that educational institutions will also be considered in the future.”
Dr. Montoya served as the dissertation chair for Dr. Hill in the Leadership Studies program. As a student, Dr. Hill developed a leadership theory and an assessment tool. After earning his PhD, Dr. Hill reached out to Dr. Montoya to explore how his research could be applied to organizations. From that outreach, the two men formed a partnership and launched a company, “High Quality Leadership,” in 2020,
“The more we researched, the more we realized that employee engagement, especially frontline employees, is a major challenge for most organizations,” Dr. Montoya said. “This led to the initial ideas and development of the app, which is based on David’s leadership theory.”
Dr. Montoya and the former student designed the app while meeting at a local coffee shop.
“This experience,” Dr. Montoya said, “is evidence of the tremendous opportunities that exist for graduates from OLLU’s School of Business and Leadership.”