Jessica S. CobB

Jessica Cobb is a champion for educational justice whose career bridges academic scholarship, policy advocacy, and program development. Dr. Cobb holds a PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley and a JD from UCLA Law in the Critical Race Studies specialization. During law school, she interned with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, UCLA’s Civil Rights Project, and the Stanford Law Three Strikes Project. After graduating, she was the founding Director of Norco College’s Prison Education Program, where she built Associate Degree for Transfer pathways for students incarcerated at California Rehabilitation Center, a medium-security state prison. In her subsequent role as Policy Manager for Education at the National Center for Youth Law, she managed a national research project on K-12 school resource equity and investigated the quality of California’s court and county community schools. She recently served as Associate Director of the Rising Scholars Network team at the Foundation for California Community Colleges, onboarding regional coordinators and developing specialized support for colleges serving students in juvenile detention.

Dr. Cobb is dedicated to transforming educational institutions to nurture the practice of freedom. She has published academic articles in journals including Sociology of Education and Social Science Quarterly and co-authored policy reports with attorneys at Public Advocates and the ACLU of California. She has facilitated participatory research workshops and know-your-rights presentations for systems-impacted youth, and she has delivered listening sessions to attorneys with the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. Dr. Cobb has a decade of board service at College Access Plan, a nonprofit based in her hometown of Pasadena, California that prepares underserved students to succeed in college.