Jessica earned a BA in Psychology and Sociology from Penn State in 2013 and an MS in Criminal Justice from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2015. She received her PhD from University of Maryland in 2020 with a dissertation titled "Explaining resilience to peer influence: The role of decision-making." Her research focuses on contextualizing decision-making regarding crime with self, social, and environmental factors. Her work has been published in Criminology, Justice Quarterly, and Deviant Behavior. While a PhD student at Maryland, she worked as a research assistant for Drs. Jean McGloin, Sally Simpson, and Peter Reuter, and taught Criminology and Introduction to Corrections.