Jessica Jencek is the founding principal of Jencek Consulting. Jessica is a seasoned nonprofit fundraising leader with a particular focus on the health sciences, higher education, and health care. Her 25-year career has spanned academic medicine, public and private universities, and hospitals and clinics in the San Francisco Bay Area. Jessica dedicated over nine years to University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and has also worked at University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), University of the Pacific School of Dentistry (Dugoni School), and Sutter Health.

Jessica’s specialties include planning and leading fundraising campaigns at all stages, closing transformational gifts, executing innovative engagement strategies, building and diversifying donor pipelines through annual and major giving, and mentoring development professionals and ambassadors including physician science leaders and board members.

Jessica co-led a $5 billion fundraising campaign at UCSF, which closed in September of 2020 with $6.18 billion raised.  As Assistant Vice Chancellor, she led a major and principal gifts team covering basic science research and clinical departments including neuroscience, cancer, women’s health and diabetes. At UCSF, Jessica directed the campaign for Discovery Fellows, the largest endowed program for PhD students in the UC system, and partnered with physicians, scientists, department chairs, and other colleagues to raise gifts ranging from $10,000 to $50 million+.

As Associate Dean at the Dugoni School in downtown San Francisco, Jessica and her team surpassed an ambitious campaign goal of $65 million, raising nearly $70 million, a historical high for dental education.  The Dugoni School not only provides a world-class, humanistic education for its students, but also provides comprehensive oral health care, much of which is either uncompensated or heavily subsidized, for its patients who come from across the Bay Area.

Jessica earned a B.S. from Cornell University where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with distinction in research. She is a director on the board for Mal Warwick Donordigital and has served as mentorship co-chair and board member for the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Golden Gate Chapter, and as an Admissions Ambassador for Cornell University.  

Jessica and her husband, Brian, have lived in the Bay Area since 2001 and their daughter, Ava, is a public high school student in San Francisco. In her spare time, Jessica is an avid distance runner and home baker.