Jennifer Stevens, a native of southern Virginia, began her career in 1995, first serving as a public school teacher in Halifax County and then moving on to lead grant-funded education projects involving Longwood University, Virginia Tech, and NASA Langley Research Center. In 2007, she held a lead role on the team of educators and community leaders that secured a $13 million grant from the National Math and Science Initiative to start the nonprofit corporation, Virginia Advanced Study Strategies – now known as Virginia Ed Strategies. Stevens has been in a leadership role with the organization since that time and has served as its President and CEO since February of 2019. As the leader of the organization, Jennifer also serves as Project Director for its US Department of Education research projects: the Rural Math Innovation Network, a $3 million dollar Investing in Innovation (i3) grant awarded in 2016, and CHOICE, a $10.8 million Education Innovation and Research (EIR) grant awarded in 2020. With Virginia Ed Strategies being an affiliate of James Madison University, Stevens is a faculty member of JMU’s College of Education. Jennifer is certified by The Ohio State University as a DACUM facilitator and has used her training to conduct numerous job analysis sessions for the purpose of creating new training and degree programs at community colleges and universities for high-demand career fields such as unmanned systems and cybersecurity. In fact, only 4 such job analysis research reports have been done for the unmanned systems industry in the nation, and Jennifer produced 3 of them. Jennifer is a co-author on the National Career Development Association's School Career Development Advisor training curriculum, and she has presented at numerous state and national conferences on various topics related to education, career exploration, and the importance of work-based learning opportunities for our youth.Jennifer lives in Virginia Beach with her husband, John, and they are the proud parents of 5 sons – Jared, Noah, Caleb, Isaac, and Levi – who range in age from 26 to 10.