Jessi has wanted be an archaeologist since she was 10 years old, and she has been working as an archaeologist more or less continuously since she was 15. But she only became interested in underwater archaeology in college at Harvard University while working on archaeological sites being impacted by coastal erosion. After her graduation with a degree in anthropology, she worked as a contract archaeologist for several years, during which time she became scuba certified and decided to pursue an advanced degree. In 2012, she received her Ph.D. from the Department of Anthropology at Texas A&M University. Her dissertation focused on the archaeological context of cultural materials found in underwater sinkholes in the Aucilla River of Florida, where hundreds of artifacts dating to the Paleoindian period, more than 10,000 years old, have been discovered. She was able to determine that some of these artifacts were probably discovered where people had left them, so they may help explain how the very first Americans lived. Jessi is currently an assistant professor of Archaeology at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse, and continues to research submerged sites in Florida and the oldest sites in the Americas.