As Senior Project Manager; Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging (EDIB), Jessica works closely with the Director of EDIB Strategy to advance EDIB initiatives at the Center. This includes leading staff capacity-building efforts, monitoring and assessing their impact, and identifying opportunities to strengthen EDIB in the Center’s science generation, communication, and application processes. She also contributes to the Center’s measurement and evaluation team and innovator supports initiatives.
Prior to joining the Center in September 2014, Jessica worked for 10 years as a bilingual early childhood educator, focusing on anti-bias education, in Boston (Eliot Pearson Children’s School), Seattle (El Centro de la Raza), and Itauguá, Paraguay (El Centro del Desarrollo de la Niñez). She also coordinated the Shanti volunteer program, which provided emotional support to people living with HIV/AIDS. Jessica has experience as a grassroots organizer with the Boston Dyke March, an event focusing on intersecting oppressions in the LGBTQIA+ community. And at College of the Holy Cross, she helped organize the Multicultural Peer Educator program, focused on consciousness raising, building an inclusive community, and working for social justice. Currently, her activist work centers around the intersection of mindfulness and social justice in her Buddhist community. Jessica received her B.A. in Spanish from College of the Holy Cross and her M.A. in child development from Tufts University.