“I grew up with the confidence and independence that comes from living in a rural place.”

Jessica Lynch’s childhood home was down a long dirt road in a remote part of Central Oregon’s Crooked River Ranch. She loved growing up rural. “We had a lot of freedom and could go around and do things,” she says, “because my parents knew everyone in the community was watching out for me.”

Today, Jessica lives in Eugene, where she works with our Postsecondary Success team as a program associate administering scholarship awards, providing financial aid and scholarship information and assistance to scholarship recipients. Before joining the Ford Family Foundation, she was working for the University of Oregon financial aid office. “It’s been a fun change, moving from working in financial aid at the university level to helping fund Ford students,” she says.

Her tenure at UO lasted for 11 years, nine of them as an ESL instructor and the last two years in the financial aid office. Jessica has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish from UO and a graduate degree in education from New Mexico State University.

On nice weekends, you can find Jessica, her husband and their two young sons visiting local farms or recreating on the McKenzie River.
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