Jessica Jackson

I've been in manufacturing my whole life - I was literally raised in this industry. It's a family tradition. My family owns a very large manufacturing business in North America, but I never worked for them. Instead, my dad went off and started his own thing in sheet metal products. When I was young, he teamed up with another business owner who did signage, and together they built up a sign manufacturing company. After high school, I thought I wanted to study mechanical engineering, so I did that for a little while. But I ended up taking a break because I got pregnant and had my son, who's 14 now. During that time, I tried to find what I was passionate about. My dad said that with where I'd gotten in engineering school, they could use a drafter, so I started doing digital graphics and drafting, making engineered plans and photo renderings so customers could see the product before it got built. That evolved into creating the files that the machines use in manufacturing. From there, I had a lot of hands-on experience in the shop, understanding how things were built, and it got to the point where I was managing projects and pushing them through the shop. I worked for my dad in that dual role of drafting and project management for about 4 years. Then I had my second child, my daughter, got married, and moved from Florida to Tennessee. In that transition, I found my current position with AGI, where I've been for 10 years now. I came in as a project manager and spent the first 9 years managing a large national automobile brand, specifically the architectural branding for their buildings. Then I moved up into the PM2 role, and now I'm a senior PM working on a national bank brand. During COVID, I went back to school for software engineering, and I'm finishing up that degree at the end of this year through an online program. Throughout the past few years as a senior project manager, I've built and structured different technological tools to help project managers and the operational side of the business. I'm Smartsheet certified and have done a lot of work with that platform. I drive a lot of innovation in my company, bridging the gap between what we do for work and having the technology and tools to support it. It's really a cultural thing because you have to be accepting of change, and there are a lot of people who resist change in the workforce. I think one of my greatest achievements is building up a good culture of innovation, because it does so much not only for my team but the entire company and really others that do business with us and interact with us.

• Smartsheet Certification

• Mechanical Engineering (some college
• Incomplete)
• Bachelor's Degree in Software Engineering (in progress
• Expected completion end of 2024)