Jessi Cook is a mother of five, a military wife, an Air Force Veteran, and an all around creative. She was raised in the rural town of Horseshoe Bend, Idaho where she established of love of literature very young. She believes being creative is a gift and responsibility from our creator and advocates for creative professions as a way to stay connected to God and nurture spiritual, emotional, and mental health. She believes art is a social responsibility that creates empathy and human connection.
Writer, Veteran, Mama, Mil Spouse and NSA Intelligence Analyst
About Jessi
Jessi joined the Air Force straight out of high school as an Intelligence Analyst and received her first assignment to the National Security Agency (NSA) Headquarters at Fort Meade, Maryland, where she was the first analyst assigned to NSA’s newly established Hostage Event Management Team.
After she left the Air Force, she was immediately hired as a federal employee into NSA as the agency's first "Battlebridge" Operator, the NSA version of the situation room. There she worked on global crisis situations for several years until her family received military orders to Oahu, Hawai’i.
While in Hawai’i, removed from the fast pace of Washington D.C. and Maryland, she rediscovered her love of writing for children and screenwriting, after her fifth child was born 11 weeks early and quarantined in the NICU during COVID. She began writing again to cope with the separation from her newborn son and the hardship of homeschooling her other four children.
After maternity leave, she sought a new job in communications within the federal government but was repeatedly turned down and deemed “Unqualified” because her degree was not in communications. But when her husband received military orders to San Antonio, Texas, God blessed her with a job interview in the NSA’s Strategic Communications department, where she was able to showcase her passion for creativity and land a job as a writer. Soon after, she was selected into the Writers’ Guild Foundation Veteran’s Writing Project as a screenwriting fellow in the 2023-2024 cohort.
Jessi left the NSA after 19 years of military and civilian service during the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reductions to pursue writing full-time. She still carries a great deal of respect for the men and women of the Intelligence Community and they inspire much of her writing.
When she’s not writing, Jessi enjoys spending time with her five kids and husband, gardening, baking bread, writing music, and reading. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Intelligence Studies, a Master of Science in Intelligence Management with a concentration in Collection, and is a current student at the University of California, Riverside, studying to receive a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. She currently lives in San Antonio, Texas, with her husband Robert and their five children: Cameron, Carmen, Cory, Cooper John, and Connor.