After graduating from Wheaton College in Massachusetts in 2003, Jessica headed to Washington, D.C., to work for Senator Tom Daschle. She was a staff assistant and deputy press secretary for the Senate Majority Leader until 2004. At that point, Jess took a short respite from politics to work as a legislative assistant for a boutique D.C. law firm. But she soon realized an age-old lesson: you can take the girl out of Capitol Hill, but can’t take the Hill out of the girl. So she returned to work as the deputy scheduler for Senator Dianne Feinstein and the Deputy Chief Clerk for the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

Hoping to conquer her fear of public speaking and aversion to writing, Jess joined West Wing Writers in June of 2008 and immediately set about whipping the writers into shape.