About Jessica

Jessica Karels is a writer, speaker, and presenter that uses her "mad skillz" from the business world to advocate relationship choice.  She is a bit of an odd duck when it comes to polyamory because she breaks a LOT of the stereotypes about poly people. In addition to being "young" (a Gen X / Gen Y cusp'er at 30 years old), she is also a suburbanite, and enthusiastic corporate sellout, mostly vanilla, spiritually agnostic, and politically right of center.

By day Jessica is a Regional Sales Director (wholesaler) with RiverSource Insurance. In laymen's terms, she coaches salespeople about how to sell (a lot more difficult than it sounds!). During her non-work hours she balances her relationships, social time, education time, and helping polyamory organizations "get s*** done".

Jessica has an extensive background when it comes to leadership  and organizing in the poly community at large. She has been a council member (leader) for MNPoly since 2004. Her accomplishments include organizing the group's party room at CONvergence (which has since spun off into its own organization), fascilitating discussion groups, hosting town halls, and redesigining the group's website.  She is also the CTO of Modern Poly, a social media and publishing organizaition, as well as their webmaster.  She is also a member of the Polyamory Leadership Network, an organization for polyamory leaders and organizers that want to collaborate on larger projects.

In addition to being a social organizer, Jessica is also a distinguished public speaker. Her experience ranges from panel discussions  to "Polyamory 101" classes and workshops about communication, leadership, and culture. She has recently received her Competent Communicator designation through Toastmasters and is working on her Advanced Speaker Bronze designation.

Her ultimate goal is to develop several productive "movers and shakers" within the polyamory community, make them into her minions, and shift her attention towards public speaking and workshops.

My social network profiles

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Tribe.net
• Livejournal
• MySpace

Legal disclaimer: The views of this site are mine only (Jessica K.) and do not reflect the views or opinions of my employer or any organization that I'm involved with. Yes, this sounds corporate'y, but I have to say it in order to cover everyone's butts :p