Jessica Bacal

Jessica Bacal is director of Reflective & Integrative Practices and of the Narratives Project at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. She leads programs to help students explore identity and find resilience in community. At Smith, she teaches a course which she also helped to develop, called Designing Your Path. It asks students: Where are you now? How did you get here? What matters to you? What are the possible paths forward that will allow you to pursue what matters to you? Jessica is the creator and editor of two books published by Penguin Random House: Mistakes I Made at Work (2014) and The Rejection That Changed My Life (2021). She received an MFA in writing from Hunter College, an MS.Ed. from Bank Street College of Education, and an EdD from the University of Pennsylvania.