Jessica is a social development practitioner and currently the Social & Community Practice Manager at Umwelt Australia. She comes from past roles with industry, in consulting, and in community development and the humanitarian sector in diverse contexts across Australia, the Horn of Africa, and the Eastern Mediterranean and APAC regions.

Embedded across all aspects of Jessica’s work is her ability to uphold strong ethical principles, and to engage with and collaborate with wide ranging stakeholders with professionalism and compassion across often inter-cultural and challenging project settings. Jessica's approach to finding pragmatic and strategic solutions in working to achieve both improved community outcomes and effective project delivery is often focussed on ensuring the balanced representation of often competing and multi-faceted stakeholder interests and views.

In recent years, Jessica has led the social components of numerous integrated and multidisciplinary impact assessment processes for renewable energy projects and energy infrastructure projects, across technologies and different jurisdictions in Australia. Through this work she is responsible for leading multistakeholder projects and teams through robust social research and community consultation processes, to evaluate the impacts of developments on people, and to support affected communities through the development of strategies and programs for developers to be able to effectively address or manage social issues on the ground where their projects are situated.