• Award-winning Filmmaker

  • Working Mom

  • Sutton Candidate Forum

  • Middle East

  • Hands of Peace - Chicago

  • Chicago Public Radio

  • Great Dog Rescue New England (Fostering)

  • Everest - King Hussein Cancer Foundation

  • Telling Prince's Story

Professional Leadership

For more than 25 years, Jen has worked as a documentary filmmaker, director, producer, editor, and small business owner.

Her work has taken her from kitchen tables across America to the Middle East and Mount Everest, telling the stories of everyday people and navigating complicated situations where listening, asking hard questions, and earning trust matter.

Her films have screened at major festivals and institutions, including Sundance and the Whitney Biennial, and her documentary The Promised Band won Best Documentary Feature at Cinequest. She has spent more than a decade as a supervising producer on House Hunters International.

Jen is a graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts and Columbia University and is completing the Harvard Kennedy School Public Leadership Credential.

A lifetime of Volunteer Service

Jen believes public service begins long before someone runs for office.

Internationally, she’s worked with U.N personnel, the Israeli-Palestinian Youth Organization Hands of Peace, and The Red Cross. She has also spent years raising money and awareness for cancer, from the Pan-Mass Challenge to a 2013 Mount Everest expedition benefiting the King Hussein Cancer Center in Jordan—an experience she documented in the film From the Lowest to the Highest.

More locally, she has served as a Girl Scout troop leader and fostered dogs for Great Dog Rescue New England.

In New York City, Jen volunteered with PAWS, helping elderly and vulnerable residents keep their companion animals; served as a volunteer rape crisis counselor at St. Vincent’s Hospital, working with survivors and law enforcement; and volunteered as a citizen responder in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

Today, she is raising her children where she grew up, continuing a lifelong commitment to showing up and serving her community.

Local Leadership

Jen returned home to the Blackstone Valley to raise her family and became deeply involved in the community where she grew up.

She established the Sutton Non-Partisan Candidate Committee, creating an organized way for residents to hear directly from candidates for local office, learn about their positions, and make informed choices at the ballot box. The program will enter its third year in 2027.

Jen also helped re-establish the Sutton Democratic Town Committee and serves as its chair. She is a member of the Sutton Cultural Council, supporting local arts and cultural programming, and has remained active in community organizing, volunteering, and civic engagement throughout Sutton.

Education & Mentorship

Education has been a consistent part of Jen’s professional and community life.

Jen taught film as an adjunct professor at Manhattanville College and participated in elementary school film education programs, including Panasonic Kid Witness News at Columbia University. She has led filmmaking workshops for elementary school students from Queens to Cape Cod, sharing the skills she developed over decades in film and television with the next generation.

Most recently, Jen taught a history session for upperclassmen at Assumption School in Millbury, drawing on her first-person experience in New York City during and immediately after the September 11 attacks.

As a filmmaker, Jen has also spent her career learning from people with very different backgrounds and experiences—a perspective that informs her belief in education, critical thinking, and information literacy.

Bringing Different People Together

Much of Jen’s career has required working with people who disagree—sometimes profoundly.

Her documentary The Promised Band followed Israeli and Palestinian women attempting to build friendships across political, cultural, and physical barriers. Making the film required years of listening, trust-building, persistence, and navigating competing perspectives.

Those experiences shaped Jen’s approach to leadership: listen before speaking, understand the whole problem, look for common ground where it exists, and don't pretend difficult problems have easy answers.

Helping Sutton Through a Tough Situation

When Sutton faced a difficult choice over compliance with the MBTA Communities Act, members of the Select Board reached out to Jen for help communicating with residents.

She spoke directly to residents on the town’s main social media site about what was at stake, then worked with local leaders to organize a public information session, answer questions, and clarify the consequences of each choice. The measure ultimately passed Town Meeting 194–16, helping Sutton avoid the potential loss of state grants and other consequences of noncompliance.

Jen didn’t create the situation or champion the mandate. She helped her community navigate a difficult problem once it was in front of them—by bringing people together, providing information, and focusing on a practical way forward.

Building & Creating

Jen has spent her career taking ideas from a blank page to something real.

Films, television programs, small businesses, community projects, and civic organizations all require the same basic skills: assembling the right people, working within a budget, solving problems when plans change, and finishing what you start.

Jen believes government needs more people with experience creating things—not simply criticizing what already exists.