The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is the largest professional organization for architects in the United States. Jess is a long-time AIA member, having won the organization’s national “Associate Member of the Year” Award in 2006. She travelled to Southwest China as a part of an AIA Housing Delegation in 2014, and has served in several volunteer leadership positions, including: the AIA California Council Board of Directors from 2005-2006, the national AIA Advocacy Committee in 2006, and the Regional and Urban Design Knowledge Community 2015-2019, including a term as national chair in 2016-2017. She has spoken at the national AIA Conference on Architecture in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2011, and at various component events, including AIA California’s Desert Practice Conference (2004), AIA Grassroots Conference (2007), AIA Minneapolis’ Housing Design Awards Jury (2016), the AIA Build America Summit (2016), AIA Florida’s ActiveCITY Conference (2017), and AIA Minnesota’s Lake Superior Design Retreat (2019). Despite her active record of membership and service within the AIA, you can usually find Jess chatting with other members about how the organization might do more to reflect the words that civil rights leader Whitney Young spoke to its annual conference in June 1968. She previously was involved with organizing efforts around diversifying the organization and profession, was a signatory to the 2004 Prison Design Boycott pledge organized by ADPSR, and is currently involved with efforts to demand that the AIA amend its Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct to prohibit the design of spaces for killing, torture, and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

Jess has taught in the Urban and Regional Planning program at Georgetown University since 2014. She teaches planning studio, ethics, and seminars about urban redevelopment and creative cities. In 2017, Jess was recognized by the Urban and Regional Planning Department as its “Outstanding Faculty Member.”

Jess was a resident in 2018 for the Santa Fe Art Institute’s “Equal Justice” Residency. She studied the Hopewell-Mann neighborhood of Santa Fe and captured a point in time through photographs, economic data and field observations on a “memory quilt” to be used as a reference point in the face of rapid pace neighborhood change.

Jess has been a member of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) since 2005 (and worked for ULI from 2009 to 2015). She serves as an Instructor in the ULI Urban Plan Program, advises ULI Tampa Bay on equitable approaches to transit-oriented development, and serves on the Program Committee of ULI Northwest. She has spoken at several ULI events including: ULI Women’s Leadership Regional Assembly (2019), ULI Michigan’s Emerging Trends Conference (2019), ULI Western New York’s Development Forum (2017), ULI Tampa Bay’s Emerging Trends Conference (2017), the ULI Terwilliger Center’s National Housing Forum (2016), and the ULI Houston Awards for Excellence Jury (2013).

Jess has taught at the University of Washington since 2019 as an affiliate instructor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning.