Sunshine from Polynesia performs Hawaiian and Tahitian Dances on the Northwest Folklife Festival’s new Open-Air Dance Stage. (Photo by Christopher Nelson)

Jessica was the founding executive director of The Seattle Globalist. She is an international radio journalist whose work has been broadcast by dozens of public radio stations, networks and programs. She has received two Edward R. Murrow Awards, regionally for her radio series Life on the Duwamish and nationally for Generation Putin, an hour-long public radio special on young people and political change in the former Soviet Union. She won a 2015 Gracie Award for her radio series on humanitarian drug trafficking. Jessica teaches journalism at the University of Washington.