Coming Home to Herself: Jessica Brigham's Path to AcademySTAY

Employee Spotlight | Jessica Brigham, HR & Finance Manager

Jessica Brigham, HR and Finance Manager at AcademySTAY in Sacramento. When the power stays on in 28 apartments and staff get paid on time, that's her work.

When Jessica Brigham got out of prison in 2012, even the recycling bins had multiplied. There used to be one bin. Now there were three, all different colors, each with its own rules. Chia seeds seemed to be everywhere. People opened wine bottles in unfamiliar ways. A lot can change in seven years.

She figured it out. But she remembers what it cost her, too. The daily small humiliations of a world that hadn’t waited.

It matters that she remembers. Because the young adults she works with every day at AcademySTAY know a version of that feeling, too.

Today, Jessica runs finance and human resources at AcademySTAY, the Sacramento-based nonprofit that provides stable housing and wraparound support for young adults transitioning from foster care. Her job is the infrastructure nobody sees: payroll, compliance, accounting, HR policy, and health plan, which she spent months getting off the ground. When the power stays on in 28 apartments, and staff get paid on time, that’s Jessica.

She describes finance differently than most. "When you’re in finance, you see how the organization moves, where the money goes, and what it says about the direction we’re choosing to move in." She built AcademySTAY’s accounting system from scratch, made it paperless and auditable. Now it’s ready for growth.

Jessica with Deja, a student intern on AcademySTAY's team. Jessica reads finance as a map of where an organization is choosing to go.

Most people look for more stability or better pay in their next job. Jessica was looking for something that hadn't been built yet. Her previous employer ran an $8 million budget and had been operating for 30 years. AcademySTAY was brand new. "The idea of coming to something new excited me," she says. "In my mind I was going to be part of building this, implementing systems and processes and policies, things that are very important to a nonprofit to run as smoothly as it can." She wanted to get it right from the beginning. Most organizations don't get that chance.

None of that is visible from the outside. What is visible, if you pay attention, is that Jessica brings something to this work that no credential can replicate, though she’s currently working on her MBA at Sacramento State.

Like the youth she serves, she also exited the system into a gap. No credit, no rental history or co-signor, a seven-year gap in her resume. The world had continued moving, and she had to catch up to it with nothing to hold onto while she did.

After a hard season, most people go back somewhere: a childhood bedroom, a shelf with an old trophy, a worn stuffed animal. These objects hold your history and ground you. They remind you who you were, making it easier to find your way back.

Jessica didn’t have that. And without it, something quieter and more corrosive set in. “There’s a feeling of being erased and forgotten about,” she says. “You start to question your whole existence. Where do I belong?”

She had to find “home” somewhere else.

“I floundered for many years,” she says, “to come home to myself.”

Jessica with AcademySTAY students Deja and Elias. She's careful not to equate her story with theirs, but she knows what it is to rebuild with nothing to hold onto.

For the young adults at AcademySTAY, who grew up moving between placements or group homes, or aging out with a bag of belongings and no shelf anywhere to hold their history, that phrase resonates differently than it might for anyone else. Coming home to yourself means learning that you, alone, with no objects and no history anyone kept for you, are enough to be home. That’s not a small task.

She found comfort in institutions. Narcotics Anonymous. Cabrillo Community College. The UC Santa Cruz library, where she'd go just to sit on campus for a while. She didn't want to leave. Accounting made sense to her, but she kept watching the people around her burn out. She didn't want that. So, she pivoted to HR and organizational management, finished her degree, and kept going.

Making the Dean's List at Sac State wasn't something she wanted to share with everyone. Her good news never quite lands with her family of origin the way she hopes it will. "It always seems to land flat," she says. The people she wanted to tell were her coworkers and the students. The ones who had seen what it took to get there. 

She doesn't have a foster care background. She's careful not to draw a line between her story and the youth she serves. But she knows the ins and outs of a system. She knows what it is to be within one without love and without a map.

What she understood about the students from the beginning was that resilience isn’t a personality trait. It’s an outcome. “These individuals are highly resilient because of their experiences,” she says.

“Healing from trauma is really where all the beauty is born.” –Jessica Brigham

Alongside what she’s learned from her professional journey, she also knows firsthand what it means to have a stable place to land.

"I’ve been in so many relationships just for a place to stay," she says. "For these kids to have a place with no strings attached, where they can just be students and figure things out at their own pace, is so gratifying."

She calls what she does here “living amends.” It’s a recovery concept, but she applies it practically, as she does most things.

“Living amends means I may not have the forgiveness from those I harmed the most,” she says, “but what I can do is forgive myself, and then be intentional about doing good on a daily basis. It doesn’t have to be huge. It’s little things.”

Like showing up on a Tuesday when she’s not feeling it. Being genuinely happy to see a student walk in. Sharing good news from her own life so they can see what the road forward actually looks like.

The students notice.

“With Jessica, after hearing her story, I realized she embodied the idea that at any point in life, you can rewrite your story,” says Star, a current AcademySTAY student. “If you do not like the direction your life is going, you can change course. You do not have to live according to society’s expectations or timelines. We are allowed to start over, decide what truly makes us happy, remain determined, stay consistent, and still thrive.”

Jessica on the AcademySTAY campus. She calls the work here living amends: showing up, every day, for the next student.

Asked what she’d want students to carry with them long after they’ve left, she redirects without hesitating.

“I’d want them to realize it was all about them,” she says. “Maybe: thank you for letting us be a part of your journey for that moment in time. And, you did it. Go on with your bad self.”

She pauses.

“The reason I show up every day is to help the next student succeed.”

If you'd like to learn more about AcademySTAY, visit academystay.org. If you know a young adult who might be a fit for our program, applications are open at academystay.org/apply.