Jessica Jenkins!

Tell your life story in 3 sentences.
I grew up in Massachusetts, went to boarding school in Switzerland, college at Northwestern, and grad school at Stanford. I loved playing with Tinker Toys and Legos as a kid, so I majored in mechanical engineering in college, aerospace engineering in grad school, and I've worked on helicopters and satellites, at NASA-Ames and Lockheed Martin, respectively. I've played just about every sport at some time or another, even though I didn't finish growing into my hands and feet until senior year of high school, but I think dancing is the best life-long one in existence.

How did you get involved in dance?
I was a very clumsy ballerina from ages 4-8, when I became too tall. I took a hiatus until the required cotillion social dance classes in 6th and 7th grade, where I learned how to back-lead from the follow position (which took 7 years to unlearn). Started again by getting hooked on swing after taking a class with a friend junior year in college and lots of Richard's classes starting from my first quarter at Stanford, where I met a lot of you beautiful people. :)

What do you do besides dancing?
Work, sleep, read, watch too much TV, ski, swim, fly, travel, cook, hang out with friends, volunteer in middle and high schools, edit bad spelling and grammar, play ultimate, chat with friends in other languages, imagine what type of dance I could do to whatever I have playing on my headphones at work.

What are your life goals?
To fly in space, live overseas, work to directly improve the safety of others, and to convince a few more girls that engineering can be fun.

If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
To stop time, like Evie from "Out of this World."