Jessica Buchleitner

The full, formal bio

Jessica Buchleitner is a communications scientist, journalist, and diplomat. As the author/curator of the award-winning 50 Women anthology series and a lead editor of "Stories from Girls and Women of Mogadishu," her features and books tell the stories of global unsung heroes while attacking hard-hitting issues of sexual violence, armed conflict, diplomacy structures, and the impact of emerging technology on society. Her journalism appeared in Nieman Storyboard, Women News Network, Smithsonian, Publisher’s Weekly, Reveal/Center for Investigative Reporting, L'Atelier Insights, and Northwestern University Knight Lab, among others.

As a communications scientist and advisor, she designed solutions that activated high trust and resiliency for 16 multinational companies, startups, and NGOs. She specializes in change communication and thought leadership/brand journalism with projects spanning mergers & acquisitions, regulatory and policy matters, crisis mitigation, mass-scale digital transformations, change management initiatives, and brand dissolutions/separations. 

For 12 years, Jessica has served in United Nations interfacing roles as an NGO delegate, NGO permanent representative, and liaison, driving civil society engagement with high-level policy. She collaborated with diplomats, politicians, and civil society stakeholders in the “Cities for CEDAW” campaign, encouraging U.S. city mayors to adopt the CEDAW ordinance, the international women’s bill of rights. Jessica also brought CEDAW to the private sector by creating a framework, CEDAW for Companies, to implement its provisions. While an expat in Germany, she co-founded and served as policy lead for 3500+ civil society group Munich International Women, which aims to connect highly skilled immigrant and expat women with employment, business opportunities, and the local community while collaborating with policymakers to elevate the status of skilled migrants in Germany.

Jessica was featured Journalist of the Month for the International Journalists’ Network in 2015 and a 2016 Medill Editorial Scholarship recipient for her Master of Science in Journalism/ Media Innovation from Northwestern University, where she studied the application of agile innovation methods to media companies and technologically driven cultural shifts in news reporting. She was a 2017 European Union External Action press fellow, where she witnessed article 50 of the European Consitution delivered to the European Council, initiating Brexit; a 2020 recipient of a Media Lab Bayern grant for the inaugural CUNY Entrepreneurial Journalism Creators initiative; and a 2023 ICFJ Newscorp reporting fellow for a forthcoming essay on ancestral homeland migration.

Using her film and voice-over acting background, Jessica delivers powerful speeches and panel discussions at United Nations sessions, universities, NGOs, conferences, and think tanks. She holds a Bachelor of Science in IMC from Winthrop University and a Master of Science in Journalism & Media Innovation from Northwestern University.

Her name “Buchleitner” is pronounced (BOOOK-LIGHT-NUR) for any non-Deutsch speakers out there.