Jessica Dawkins moved to Louisville at 7:30 AM the morning after she graduated from high school in Lafayette, Indiana.

Almost 10 years later, she decided to go to college upon becoming a mother and realizing she wanted a higher education. What happened on her first day at Jefferson Community College is that she both fell in love with school and realized this: She wanted to be a Louisville historian.

“I designed my entire curriculum so that anytime I had to write a paper or do a school project I would relate it to Louisville,” says Jessica. “I had an assignment to profile an historic figure for one class and I did my paper on (Ben) York, the slave of William Clark who began the Lewis and Clark expedition from right here at the Falls of the Ohio. I also worked as a researcher at institutions like Farmington House and the Portland Museum.”

Then Jessica applied for a national transfer scholarship with the Jack Kent Cook Foundation, which funds students to move from a two-year program into a four-year program. She got it and was granted up to $30,000 a year to attend any accredited university in the world. Guess where her degree will be from when she finishes this fall? The University of Louisville.

“I love Louisville,” she says, “and this is where I need to be to do what I want with my life.”

It’s conviction that cannot be deterred. Jessica is a Kentucky Colonel, owns dozens of rare books about Louisville, lines her living room walls with black-and-white images of downtown buildings and probably knows more about the city than even the mayor. And she is convinced that there is a job out there for her doing what she loves . . . which is telling people everything she knows about Louisville.

“I’m driven to promote the city” says Jessica; “its history and its culture. People miss out on so much of the richness and culture here. More people outside of just the convention industry should start thinking about Louisville as a destination place,” she adds. To illustrate, Jessica quotes Louisville’s mayor from 1923, Huston Quinn, who said "Louisville has the thrift of the east, the hustle of the north, the optimism of the west and the hospitality of the south." Jessica could have been Quinn’s speechwriter.