Jessica McCaughey, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the University Writing Program at George Washington University (GWU), where she teaches academic and professional writing. She is also the co-Founder and co-CEO of The Professional Writing Academy, a training and consulting organization designed to improve written communication across all types of workplaces.

For more than a decade, Jessica directed the Workplace Writing Program at GWU. In that role, she created and facilitated writing workshops for teams at a variety of organizations, including Amnesty International, DC United, the US Department of Labor, the FDA, the Democracy Fund, and the American Legion, among many others.

Jessica’s research focuses primarily on the transfer of writing skills from the academic to the professional realm. Along with her colleague Brian Fitzpatrick at George Mason University, Jessica co-founded and co-directs the Archive of Workplace Writing Experiences. Her creative writing has appeared in publications like The Best American Travel Writing, The Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and the Fine Arts, and The Rumpus, among many others, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. In her previous life, Jessica worked as a copywriter, editor, and communications manager. She enjoys obsessing about the tomatoes in her back yard, reading novels (this was a recent favorite), and circling the neighborhood on foot with her five-year-old daughter, critiquing and sometimes applauding the neighbors’ seasonal decorations.