Jessica has been working in theatre for as long as she can remember. Born in Chicago, her family shortly moved to Rock Island, Illinois, where her father, Marc Lewis became heavily involved in the Playcrafters Barn Theatre in nearby Moline. Jessica spent a great deal of time in that theatre, with her family, helping out as a little usherette, gopher, and miniature mascot. After those experiences in her formative years, it is no wonder she finds life backstage as natural as breathing.

The Lewis family moved once again just before Jessica's ninth birthday to a suburb of the Twin Cities. While her father continued his quality community theatre work with the Dakota Civic Theatre, Jessica began to branch out into her own theatre experiences. She built her first set for Scott Highland Middle School's annual play when she was 10, and the year after performed as part of the pit orchestra for the school musical.

Another family move landed Jessica in Charlotte, North Carolina. Independence High School was left without a drama teacher for a semester of her Junior year, but Jessica and a friend, Stacy Rue, decided that "the show must go on," and produced The Importance of Being Ernest with a fairly successful run.

After that, Jessica limited herself to purely backstage activities, teaching herself the basics of patching, programming, and lighting design on the school theatre's ancient, touchy two-scene preset board. She stage managed the school's musical her final semester, and won the department's Thespian of the Year award before graduating in the top 5% of her class.

The summer between high school and college, Jessica got her first taste of real professional theatre, when she worked as a carpentry, stage hand, and costuming intern at the Beef & Boards Dinner Theatre in Indianapolis. She worked very long hours, bouncing between departments and running spotlight on shows in the evenings, but she learned a great deal. She went back the following year to continue the apprenticeship.

Jessica won a scholarship to Appalachian State University, where she was the charter student in their newly designed theatre tech program. While at Appalachian State, she spent time working as a carpenter, master carpenter, props mistress, stitcher, designer and stage manager for the Valborg theatre, the department's main stage. Additionally, she worked as a rigger and electrician at the Farthing Auditorium, the University's "roadhouse," as well as working on various student projects in the black box studio space at I.G. Greer Auditorium. She likes to joke that between the three, she had at least a small hand in 90% of the productions as ASU during her time there, but that may not be a joke; no one has ever counted. She did learn a great deal about all technical aspects of theatre, except for sound design, which she somehow missed.

While doing all this theatre work, she also maintained a GPA of 3.48, and in her final year won what she considers one of her greatest honors, The Christina Early Memorial Scholarship. During the summers, she worked as a carpenter and stage hand in such places as the Des Moines Metro Opera and the Brevard Music Center.

After graduating Magna Cum Laude, in 2003, she took a bit of a vacation, taking a few months to simply drive around the country and see the sights. While on this trip, she developed a greater appreciation for the natural beauty of the country and her various long distance friends, and also met her future husband.

Jessica moved to the Atlanta area that fall, and initially broke into the local theatre community as the TD for Actor's Express's Killer Joe. After that, she spent a two and a half year stint as the stage manager for the locally famous, long running Peachtree Battle before breaking away to do freelance work for The Horizon Theatre, Theatre Decatur, The Alliance Theatre, and Dancing Monkey Cabaret.

In the next year, Jessica hopes to expand her free-lance work to other cities and perhaps tackle the next challenge of supervising a touring show. She also has an interest in working in opera or dance.