Bio
Prior to coming to Rutgers University, Jess was the Prevention Education Coordinator with Davis County, Utah’s only sexual assault and domestic violence services agency, where they adapted and taught public health curricula centering LGBTQ identities and relational scripts. They likewise began and sustained a community coalition focused on bystander intervention initiatives and collaborated with the Utah Department of Health to create statewide bystander curriculum. Since beginning graduate studies in fall of 2017, they have worked as Researcher and Project Coordinator with the Rutgers Center on Violence Against Women and Children (VAWC). They have conducted a myriad of focus groups on dating and sexual violence and co-authored reports on campus climate. Since summer of 2018, they have led a participatory action “concept mapping” project centering the insights of racialized, queer and/or gender variant students across Camden, Newark, and New Brunswick campuses in mitigating experiences of violence, harm and oppression.