Jessie grew up in England, raised by her American mother and London - Irish father in rural East Anglia, and through various parental marriages, is one of eight kids. As a child, she played recorder, violin and piano, competing and performing nationally and internationally in orchestras and chamber groups. Music was constantly played at home, and her Irish grandparents got her hooked on Irish trad at a young age. 

After graduating high school, she moved to Kalimantan, Indonesia, to teach English for six months. Upon her rather culture-shocked return to Old Blighty, she went to Durham University to study Anthropology with Ethnomusicolgy, and on a particularly soggy winter night, found herself in the Coalpits pub in Durham, drowning her sorrows to the sounds of the local Irish session. They invited her to join in and for the next three years she played tons of music, with a lovely gang of great trad players in Durham - definitely a highlight of University life. She moved to Colorado in 1997 , lured by the Rockies and the promise of powder skiing in Steamboat Springs. When not on the hill, she worked for five years as a Program Director for Strings in the Mountains Music Festival. Incidentally, for part of this time she lived in a house full of five snowboarding guys - little did she realize the great training she was getting for her future gig with Gaelic Storm. She also played in numerous bands, and started playing Oldtime and Bluegrass music regularly.  In 2005 she moved to Boulder, Colorado to play with a trad/contemporary Irish Band, The Wayfarers, which came second in the prestigious Telluride Bluegrass Festivals Band Competition. Before joining Gaelic Storm in April 2007, she was playing and recording with songcrafter, Gregory Alan Isakov and his band The Freight, recording on his album, "That Sea the Gambler" and had travelled to England to work with singer song writer David Ford. When not playing music, cooking or traveling, she can usually be found hiking or skiing in the Rocky Mountains.