Jennifer Palmer

Jennifer is a higher education financial aid leader with extensive experience in outreach, retention, and student-centered financial aid operations, having held progressively senior roles at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Maryland.

She has served as Associate Director of Financial Aid, Outreach and Retention, Senior Assistant Director and Manager of Outreach, and Assistant Director of Financial Aid, Outreach at Johns Hopkins, where she led outreach and retention programming and managed a team of seven staff members. Her work focused on supporting diverse student populations through proactive financial aid engagement and operational excellence.

Her expertise includes verification, reconciliation, packaging, Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP), institutional methodology, and federal and state compliance. She has overseen Federal Work-Study, emergency funding, SAP appeals, high-balance processes, student caseload management, and federal verification, as well as financial literacy programming, including iGrad.

She brings deep experience supporting special and first-generation student populations, including Hop In, Cummings Scholars, FLI, and other access-focused initiatives, and partners closely with Admissions, Registrar, Student Accounts, Academic Advising, and Student Outreach & Support teams to improve persistence and completion outcomes.

She is proficient in PowerFAIDS, PeopleSoft, OnBase, and Salesforce, and holds NASFAA credentials in Federal Verification, Campus-Based Programs, and Satisfactory Academic Progress. She has also completed leadership programs through the College Board Enrollment Leadership Academy and Johns Hopkins Carey Executive Education’s Academy for Women in Leadership.

She holds a Master of Science in School Counseling from Capella University and a Bachelor of Science in Interdisciplinary Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University, and brings a student-first lens to every aspect of her consulting work.