Author bio: I'm a life-long Californian who's been to a third of the countries in the Middle East and has put tens of thousands of miles on my bright yellow Honda Fit solo-camping throughout the Mountain West. In Spring 2018, my natural history essay 'Colusa County' was published in the Oakland Review, in Summer 2018 my misandrist mermaid poem 'Instructions to a Newly Dead Mermaid' was published in the Hashtag Queer anthology and in fall 2018 my short story 'To Free a Genie' will be published in Geek Out. In Summer 2019, seven of my poems will be including in the upcoming Imagoes anthology.

General bio: Jessica Dickinson Goodman bridges the worlds of technology and politics, bringing the best of both to what she does. She seeks to empower amazing women, whether serving as a scheduler for now-US Senator Kamala Harris or as an Impact Coach for #TeamPalestine in the US State Department’s 2017 and 2018 Techwomen programs.

Jessica’s first job out of college was running national online communications in Washington DC for the largest anti-human trafficking NGO serving survivors of all forms of trafficking. There, she built tools to track traffickers, raised 500K/yr online, ran dozens of successful advocacy campaigns, and in her evenings, taught self-defense to clients who heard she had gotten her black belt when she was 17.

In 2018 inspired by #TeamPalestine Techwomen from 2017, she built up her technical skills taking Java, Python, and C++ simultaneously and was named one of Foothill College’s Top STEM students. Jessica graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. She was a Fifth Year Scholar at Carnegie Melon which allowed her to continue her studies tuition free. During that time she spent time in Doha Qatar and still practices her Arabic daily. She graduated with a B.S in Ethics, History and Public Policy with a minor in vocal performance.

She is Chair of San Jose Human Services Commission, overseeing human rights policy for the one million person city, and was recently elected Noble Grand of the Silicon Valley Odd Fellows — she is the youngest woman to be elected to that position in the orders 150 year history. She recently accepted a role as a Technology Fellow with a Harvard University-affiliated think tank, Sense and Sustainability, focused on connecting research-tested solutions to climate change to local and national governments.