Our Leadership

Scott Ahlstrand

Managing Partner

For over 30 years, Scott has been an innovative, trusted advisor to organizations in a wide range of industries, helping them refine, articulate, and execute their business and people strategies.

Prior to founding ALA, Scott served as global head of both Strategic Workforce Consulting and Employee Engagement at Right Management, and he spent over two decades as the highest-ranking consultant at Gallup, driving client impact and practice development.

Jon Hughes

Managing Partner

For more than two decades Jon has partnered with organizations to create innovative, powerful, and practical experience programs. He leads visioning, design, and implementation efforts that are aligned with each client’s organizational DNA.

Prior to joining ALA, Jon was lead SME in Gallup’s Customer Centricity practice, along with leading the design, implementation, analytics, and insights for some of Gallup’s largest engagements. He also led Gallup’s financial services industry research initiatives, and managed the design, methodology, and insights for the Canadian Gallup Poll.

Sean Williams, PhD

Managing Partner

Sean helps clients craft insight-based and data-driven solutions to their business problems, bringing 20+ years of cross-industry experience in advanced analytics and predictive modelling. Sean also has extensive experience helping organizations design, implement, and maintain their experience programs, helping them maximize value through better insight, improved actionability, and alignment to strategic objectives.

Prior to joining ALA, Sean co-founded Gallup’s advanced analytics practice, where he designed and led innovative modeling projects to help clients solve a wide range of business problems. Sean was also Senior Vice President for Client Analytics at SunTrust Bank and taught at the Ohio State University.

Jeff Bechtolt

Senior Partner

Jeff has 25+ years of experience in program management and project implementation. He’s known as an innovative professional, skilled in team leadership, development of project plans, prioritization of workflow, measurement and reporting of progress, and on-time delivery of outputs.

Prior to joining ALA Jeff spent nearly 30 years at Gallup, initially in call center management. Jeff then moved into project management, quickly becoming the go-to leader to manage implementation teams for large, complex, multi-discipline and multinational engagements. Gallup recognized Jeff’s value by naming him Senior Project Director – the only one across the firm.

Lilly Tripp

Senior Partner

Lilly has more than two decades of experience helping organizations implement and optimize their critical experience initiatives. ALA’s clients benefit from Lilly’s experience as both a consultant and facilitator of change, and as a senior leader who drove impactful and brand-aligned customer experiences within large organizations.

Before joining ALA, Lilly led JD Power’s financial services consulting efforts across the Americas. Prior to that, Lilly was a senior CX strategist at SunTrust (now Truist), optimizing 30+ loyalty programs across the bank and achieving a #1 industry loyalty ranking. Lilly started her career at Wachovia (now Wells Fargo), where as both an operator and a CX leader she helped Wachovia achieve its sustained #1 CX position as measured by ACSI.