Jessica Clark is the founder and director of Philadelphia-based media strategy, production, and forecasting firm Dot Connector Studio. The company works with makers, funders and academics to research and develop new and inclusive forms of social impact media. Current and recent clients include, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guild of Future Architects, Democracy Fund, the Ford Foundation, Media Impact Funders, the Wikimedia Foundation, the Internet Archive, Knight Foundation, and others. In collaboration with clients and partners, Clark produces inventive publications, newsletters, tools and workshops such as Immerse.news, the Making a New Reality Toolkit (August 2020), and the Impact Pack.
Currently Clark has a research affiliation at MIT’s OpenDocLab, and previously she’s held fellowships at USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center and the New America Foundation. From 2014 through mid-2018, Clark served as the research director for Media Impact Funders, a network of foundations that support public interest media. From 2011-2014, she worked as AIR’s media strategist, focusing on national public media transformation production Localore. From 2007-2011 she led the Future of Public Media Project at American University’s Center for Media and Social Impact.
Over the course of this work, she has led research and convenings with organizations including NPR, PBS, and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The co-author of Beyond the Echo Chamber: Reshaping Politics Through Networked Progressive Media (The New Press, 2010), Clark served as the executive editor at national news magazine In These Times and has written regularly for such publications as MediaShift and The American Prospect. She holds a BA/MA from the University of Chicago. Learn more: dotconnectorstudio.com