Dr. Jacqueline Wilkins has 30+ years of experience in Higher Ed, as well as for and non-profit management and consulting aimed at building organizational and community capacity. Her motivation for community-engaged scholarship originates from working collaboratively with community and university partners to co-create solutions for Ohioans. She is committed to prevention education and reciprocal sharing of knowledge and expertise, where practice informs research and discovery informs application. Until recently returning full-time to her professor role, Jackie served the university in the capacity of associate dean of the College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences; director of OSU Extension, and chair for the Department of Extension.
Jackie received her bachelor's degree in psychology from Ohio Dominican University and her advanced degrees in human development and family science from The Ohio State University. She began her career at Ohio State in 1994 as an Extension associate in the Department of Human Development and Family Science. In 2000, she became the parenting state Extension specialist. Jackie also served as the Northeast Region director for Extension, where she provided leadership to 31 counties on personnel, finances, public relations, and business operations and as director, Operations, OSU Extension, where she provided leadership for the operationalization of the mission of Extension.
Jackie also has experience in the public sector as the owner of a business management consulting firm, where she designed and implemented many strategic planning initiatives and organizational analyses of efficiency, compensation, workflow, attrition, communications, and IT. Her clients included city and county governments, non-profits, court systems, United Way agencies, philanthropic entities, and for-profit businesses.
Her research interests include prevention education, family policy, organizational capacity building, and community-engaged Extension scholarship. She has received more than $12 million in local, state, and federal funding to conduct research and provide prevention programming for Ohio's children and families.