Jess Mack

Biography

Jessica Mack is Senior Director for Advocacy and Communications, Global Health Corps (GHC), where she is responsible for developing a global cadre of powerful voices for health equity. Before joining GHC, Jess managed a large grant portfolio as a Program Officer on the Global Tobacco Control Policy and Advocacy team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to that, Jess spent five years as an independent consultant specializing in reproductive rights, working in Asia, Africa, and the United States. She worked with UN Women in Thailand to leverage national and regional studies on gender-based violence as advocacy tools for Asia-Pacific Member States ahead of the UN Commission on the Status of Women; she produced a report on methods of costing the economic impact of violence against women in the region. She conducted research in Ghana on the impacts of the U.S. Helms Amendment on access to safe abortion for the global rights group Ipas. Jess was a Manager at Global Health Strategies, where she led strategic media and advocacy efforts for the 2010 Women Deliver conference, hailed by The Lancet as “the most significant event for the future of women in 20 years.” She got her start at Planned Parenthood Global, first as a part-time intern and later as Program Officer for Communication and Learning; she worked as an abortion counselor at an NYC clinic on the weekends. Jess has written widely on these issues, published in The Lancet, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, and Ms. Magazine, among others. She previously served on the Board of Directors for Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and Hawaiian Islands and the Pacific Northwest Abortion Fund. Jess earned her Master of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School and a BA in philosophy and religion from Boston University. She is currently based in New York City.