About
Jenna is a writer, scholar, storyteller, and creativity expert with a passion for helping teams and individuals tap their imaginative potential. She has an MFA in Creative Writing, a background in film and television, and a commitment to social justice. She’s currently finishing her doctorate in History and Cultural Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, where she researches the representation of racialized bodies in media and law.
For nearly two decades, Jenna has worked as a freelance writer, editor, coach, and consultant, serving a range of clients and projects in the public, private, and non-profit sectors, from multinational corporations to local governments, major museums to progressive NGOs. Her expertise lies in inclusive language, restorative justice, creativity training, and equity-focused storytelling.
In addition to writing compelling, narrative-driven copy, she facilitates workshops on creativity, conflict resolution, anti-racism, and emotional intelligence in the workplace, bringing a unique blend of academic rigor and creative flair to all her trainings. As a dedicated educator, she’s developed and taught courses in a variety of settings, from university classrooms to corporate boardrooms, television writer’s rooms to women’s prisons . In her free time, she co-founded a queer feminist collective called Safer Sex Berlin , devoted to sexual health advocacy and education for women and gender-nonconforming people. Her own experience as a queer, multi-hyphenated, sometimes marginalized, sometimes advantaged person guides everything she does.
Raised biculturally and bilingually in New York City and northern Germany, she has a deep understanding of both European and American work cultures. Her approach is friendly, motivational, and thoughtful, drawing on the techniques of creative writing and improv, the knowledge of transformational social movements, and the insights of critical (race) theory.
Informed by her two-pronged background in the creative industries and the university, she combines analytical thinking with playful exploration, creating science-driven offerings as intellectually stimulating as they are fun. Her trainings sit at the intersection of intuition and intellect, which she sees as equally necessary to personal and professional growth.
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PhD Candidate in History and Cultural Studies
Freie Universität (FU) Berlin, 2016-present
DFG-Funded Doctoral Fellow, Graduate School of N. American Studies
“Riot/Anti-Riot: Black Uprising in the News and the Law, 1964-1968”
Advisors: Martin Lüthe (FU), Frank Kelleter (FU) & David Nasaw (CUNY)
PhD Candidate in History
City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, 2014-2015
Doctoral Fellow, History, USS Ernesto Malgave Merit Scholar
Advisor: David Nasaw & David Waldstreicher
MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction)
University of Virginia, 2009-2011
Fully funded Poe/Faulkner Fellow
Advisors: Ann Beattie & Deborah Eisenberg
BA in History
Dartmouth College, 2002-2006
Summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
Advisor: Annelise Orleck
Senior Editor, Dartmouth Law Journal
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Disquiet Literary Prize, Notable Entry
Development and Production Grant, Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund in Film and Media
Talent Incubator and Screenwriting Lab, Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund in Film and Media
Sundance Film Festival Screenwriter’s Lab, Official Second Round Selection
Contemporary Art Writing Prize, Winner, The Burlington Magazine
Austin Film Festival, Official Second Round Selection
Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest, Honorable Mention (Judge: Karen Russell)
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TRANSLATION
The Gameful World, The MIT Press, 2015
Der Klang der Familie: Berlin, Techno, and the Fall of the Wall, 2014
RLF: The right life in the wrong one, DISTANZ, 2014
Black Tie, Rimini Protokoll, 2008
Fight Club: A Chorus, State Opera Berlin and posttheater, 2007
Design Reaktor Berlin, Universität der Künste, 2008
Space, Time, Play, Birkhäuser, 2007
FICTION AND ESSAY
Dance Lessons with Nietzsche, The Partially Examined Life
Topology of a Paranoid Critical Town, Conjunctions
Photography & the American Civil War, The Burlington Magazine
The Pitfalls of Being Tall, NPR
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Looking For(ward) and Beyond the Black Atlantic:
Contemporary African Immigration in the US and Germany (ongoing)
Multiyear collaborative research project lead by Martin Lüthe (FU) and Robert Reid-Pharr (CUNY)
Black Power, Hegemony, and the First Amendment (2018)
Paper delivered at conference on History and Interdisciplinary Practice organized by the CUNY History Department
The Revolution Will Not Be Peer-Reviewed: American Disconnects and the Production of Knowledge (Keynote: Larycia Hawkins) (2017)
Co-organized conference at FU Berlin and chaired roundtable on “Media, New Authoritarianism, & the Trials of the New Left” with Chris Spannos (New Internationalist) + Jerome Roos (Cambridge).
The African Burial Ground: Public History as a Means of Resistance (2015)
Paper delivered at conference on Identities, Ideologies, and Interactions: Conceptualizing New Histories at CUNY Grad Center
Louis Morton Memorial Prize in European History, Winner, Dartmouth College, 2006
Chase Peace Prize for Senior Theses, First Runner-Up, Dartmouth College, 2006
Dickey Center for International Understanding, Research Grant, 2005
British Library Newspaper Library, Research Grant, 2005
Andrew Edson Memorial Prize for Excellence in Government, Dartmouth College, 2004