Jessica’s first love was dance. At the ripe old age of 4, she was signed up for classes and never looked back! Starting with jazz, tap, and ballet, she soon began to train in other styles, such as contemporary, musical theater, and hip hop. Through all her school years she was fully immersed in dance studio life, competing and training all over the Midwest. Thanks to her incredibly supportive parents and teachers, she would travel to New York City in the summers to audition and take classes at Broadway Dance Center and Steps on Broadway.
While in undergrad at Indiana University Bloomington she continued to study dance both within the school’s dance program as a student and an assistant teacher and as a member of the student-led InMotion Dance Company.
After graduation from IU, she made her way to Chicago to pursue dance and acting as a career where she performed with Hip Hop Dance Connexion, and trained at Visceral Dance Chicago and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, as well as iO Theater (formerly Improv Olympic), The Second City Conservatory, Acting Studio Chicago, and was a cast member of the pH Productions Comedy Theater for nine years.
In 2015 she opened Shine On Dance & Movement Studio in Wicker Park, Chicago. The studio held dance, yoga, and other types of movement classes and programming for people of all ages and abilities. As it tends to do, life threw a curveball and Shine On had to close its doors in 2016, but in its short life, it was a very well-loved place for anyone and everyone in the community who wanted to “dance like no one was watching”.
After moving back to the area in 2018, Jessica was introduced to WERQ Dance Fitness and fell in love with the format. She began teaching WERQ classes in 2019 (continuing all throughout the pandemic thanks to Zoom!) and in January 2022 was hired as a cardio dance and Water in Motion instructor at Beacon Health and Fitness. By summer 2022 she had built and launched the cardio drumming program at BHF, eventually developing a training program for other instructors to learn how to teach the format. In April 2023, with the support and encouragement of Del Stukel, Jessica began her Balanced Body Reformer training and was hired as a Pilates Reformer instructor at BHF in January 2025. She is currently working on obtaining her AFAA Group Fitness certification so she can continue to learn and grow as an instructor, and bring more formats and styles into her wheelhouse!
