Biography

Jessica's first feature film, Raise Your Hand, is an inner-city high school drama set in the 90s, where two young women fight to find their voice in the face of tragedy. The film has been featured in the American Black Film Festival (ABFF), the Social Justice Now Film Festival (SJNFF), La Femme International Film Festival, The Seattle Latino Film Festival, and the Studio City International Film & TV Festival, where Raise Your Hand won Best Director, Best Actress, and The Social Justice Award.

Jessica grew up mixed-race in a minority, working-class neighborhood in Minneapolis. Expression through storytelling has always been Jessica's preferred form of communication, whether it was directing neighborhood shows on her front lawn as a kid or directing self-written main stage productions in college because it created a necessary conversation. As a filmmaker, Jessica loves to bring fresh voices to both her comedic and dramatic works that are as diverse and diversely talented as the global impact of narrative film and television themselves.

Jessica has staffed on numerous feature films and television shows such as "Star Trek - Into Darkness" "Alexander and the Terrible No Good Very Bad Day," "American Horror Story," "True Blood," "Bosch," and "Get Shorty" among others. She currently works with the Los Angeles Dodgers DodgerVision Team as the Game Day Producer for the in-stadium content. She was privileged to teach a course in Theatre Directing in Mexico City and has taught film courses at UCLA. She holds an MFA from UCLA's School of Theater, Film, and Television and a BFA in Theater Directing from the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse.

While working as the Content Producer for Cuéntame, Jessica directed and produced the highly successful LGBT Latino Youth series An Honest Conversation, which aired as a feature-length documentary on Hulu. Her short film, Soleil, aired on KCET and was honored with the DGA Latino Film Jury Prize Award. She was the first recipient of the Bad Robot Diversity Fellowship, a program sponsored by J.J. Abram's production company. She serves as an Advisory Board Member of the Creating Creators Foundation as well as a board member of BEN, the UCLA Bruin Entertainment Network, and is a member of the Director's Guild of America. Finally, she and her dog Indi are both small and scrappy.
- IMDb mini biography by: Jessica Rae