Jess Kersey was a Fellow within the C-BEAR+ Program at RLI. She had relocated to Berlin with funding from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) from October 2021 until September 2022. Jess was pursuing her PhD with the University of California Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group, where she was advised by Drs. Dan Kammen and Duncan Callaway. She is interested in decentralized, renewable energy technologies for climate mitigation and adaptation and the intersection of energy access efforts with urbanization. At RLI, she was doing research about the dimensions of electricity access, reliability, and affordability at the grid’s edge in the urban periphery.

Jess holds dual bachelor's degrees in Chemical Engineering and International Studies/Political Science from Virginia Tech. She previously worked as an energy engineer with AECOM's Energy business line providing technical, project management, and business development support for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and sustainability projects. She has a diverse engineering background which includes experience in energy, construction management, and disaster relief both domestically and internationally including work in Haiti, Panama, El Salvador, the US Virgin Islands, and Iraq. She enjoys applying her engineering expertise to development and humanitarian efforts and has been involved with Engineers Without Borders since 2016.