Jessica Marcy

REPORTING FELLOW

Jessica Marcy is a filmmaker who is passionate about telling character-led stories and social documentaries that explore connections across cultures and the environment. She served as producer and writer for After the Storm: Pollution in the Potomac, an environmental documentary about water pollution that won a Telly Award, aired on Maryland Public TV, and screened at the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital in 2021.

Marcy started her career as a journalist and has worked extensively in non-profit communications. Her journalism work has appeared in such outlets as The Washington Post, NPR, MSNBC, and Kaiser Health News. Most recently, she served as Creative Team Lead at the American Institutes for Research (AIR), where she managed a team of videographers, photographers, and graphic designers to produce work about issues in education, public health, international development, and criminal justice. She also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, where she worked on water sanitation issues.

Marcy studied Latin American studies at Barnard College and holds a master's from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a graduate certificate in documentary filmmaking from George Washington University.

She is currently finishing her master of fine arts degree in film and media arts from American University, where she is producing a short documentary about the Angel Oak, a beloved tree on Johns Island in South Carolina, as her thesis film. In particular, she is examining how trees root the Gullah Geechee to their ancestral land and cultural heritage amid the threat of land loss due to coastal development, sea level rise, and climate change in the Lowcountry.

Marcy is especially interested in bringing healing to the Earth through filmmaking that connects ancient, Indigenous knowledge, and feminine wisdom.

Jessica Marcy