bio

Jessica Shortall believes that the world isn’t as polarized as we might think, so she spends her time looking for and building common ground among uncommon allies in order to make good happen and tell stories about that good work to change the world. Her eclectic career has built unexpected bridges among unlikely partners, always sustainably, intelligently, backed by data, and centering human stories. Leveraging decades of experience from nearly every angle of the social impact space, Jessica brings unparalleled experience and perspective to the work of social innovation.

Jessica is a thought leader and speaker across intersectional impact topics, with multiple appearances at SXSW (including a 2017 keynote), a TED talk, and speaking work across university, corporate, and conference settings. Her writing appears in Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Forbes, and more, and her ghostwriting for political leaders of both parties, professional athletes, and other leaders in many more places she’s not going to tell you about here on this website.

As head of Texas Competes and America Competes for nearly a decade, Jessica buit two game-changing coalitions: one of more than 1,500 Texas employers and chambers of commerce, and one national in scope, serving Fortune 500s and making the data-driven economic case for American communities and policies that are welcoming to LGBTQ people and that remove barriers to equal opportunity to work, earn a living, participate in the community, and raise a family. This business-oriented voice has become a national model.

Jessica's first book, written out of sheer necessity, is a survival guide for breastfeeding and going back to work called Work. Pump. Repeat. As a follow-up to the book, her 2015 TEDx talk on the moral and economic case for paid family leave has garnered more than 1.5 million views and was a featured TED “Talk of the Day.”

Jessica’s own life is filled with uncommon ground. She is the daughter of Venezuelan and English immigrants. She served, and spent 9/11, in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan, a majority-Muslim, Central Asian country that was once part of the Soviet Union (as a result, she can swear in both Russian and Uzbek). She co-founded and franchised a food rescue and hunger relief non-profit, The Campus Kitchens Project, that put young people in charge and grew, via a franchise model she pionneerd, to more than 50 U.S. cities before it merged with another national organization. She was the first Director of Giving and Social Impact at TOMS Shoes, building out the company’s One for One giving mission by focusing on global partnerships, neglected tropical diseases, and sustainable eye care.

Jessica has an MBA from the University of Oxford in the UK, where she was a Skoll Scholar in Social Entrepreneurship. She is married with two children and two rescue dogs, and lives in the Twin Cities.

press coverage (Examples)

headshots

Images can be cropped for use. Please use photo credits provided.

Photo credit: Sarah Karnas

Photo credit: Sarah Karnas

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Photo credit: Sara Montour

Photo credit: Sara Montour