Our Story
North Star Partners was born from the partnership of a husband and wife, a shared calling, and a deep belief that the people doing the most important work in our communities deserve to be sustained by it.
Dr. Jay and Nehemie are nonprofit professionals at heart, shaped by years of working inside mission-driven organizations alongside the leaders, staff, and communities this work exists to serve. That is what makes NSP unique. We care because we have been here. We understand the weight because we have carried it. Passion led us here, and purpose keeps us here.
Across organizations, they saw the same pattern repeating: leaders slowly losing the thread between who they intended to be and who the pressure was making them. NSP was built to interrupt that pattern, bringing both the organizational and the human to the same table at the same time.
Dr. Jay and Nehemie work at the intersection of how organizations function and how the people inside them experience the work. At the organizational level, that means examining the decisions leaders make, the cultures they build, and the structures in place to carry the mission forward. At the individual level, it means addressing the capacity, wellness, and sustainability of the people responsible for executing it. Both lanes activate together because the work requires both.
At its core, North Star Partners exists to help organizations and the leaders who carry them move forward with steadiness, integrity, and purpose.
Meet the Team
Jamal "Dr. Jay" Jimerson
Executive Director of Leadership &
Culture Development
Dr. Jay is a co-founder of North Star Partners and a values-based leadership strategist with more than 15 years of experience in nonprofit leadership, board governance, and community engagement. Shaped by his upbringing in Brooklyn, his faith, fatherhood, and years of leading organizations serving youth, families, and communities, his work has always been personal before it was professional.
His practice is grounded in a systems-level understanding of how organizations function under pressure and what it takes for leaders to stay anchored to their values when survival starts to replace purpose. His experience through Minority Inclusion Project and Thought Partner Solutions exposed him to recurring patterns of misalignment that weaken culture, strain leadership, and stall impact.
Dr. Jay leads Lane 1 of NSP's organizational practice through facilitation, leadership development, culture-building, and strategic alignment work, anchored in his doctoral research on how non-profit leaders navigate the gap between their stated values and how they operate under sustained external pressure. That research forms the intellectual foundation of NSP's True North Leadership Model.
Dr. Jay believes that leadership integrity is not incidental to organizational health; it's the foundation of it.
Dr. Jay is currently pursuing his Ed.D. in Educational Leadership and Organizational Innovation at Marymount University.
Nehemie Moïse Jimerson, LCSW
Executive Director of Leadership Wellness & Sustainability
Nehemie is a co-founder of North Star Partners and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than a decade of experience across mental health, education, youth development, and nonprofit leadership. From a young age she knew she wanted to work with people and systems. That calling, rooted in faith and a deeply relational way of leading, has shaped everything that followed.
Her work is shaped by her frontline clinical practice, executive leadership experience, and a deep commitment to healing-centered and human-centered systems. Nehemie brings an emotional, cultural, and relational lens to leadership and organizational health, drawing on her background in trauma-informed care to understand how culture, structure, and lived experience influence behavior, decision-making, and staff wellbeing.
Nehemie leads Lane 2 of NSP's organizational practice through executive coaching, leadership coaching, team wellness, and organizational wellness support. She also maintains a direct clinical practice serving adults and young people.
Nehemie believes that people cannot pour from an empty cup, and that sustaining the works begins with sustaining the people who carry it.
Nehemie is an alumna of NYU’s Silver School of Social Work, and the University of Vermont.