Jessica Ocean

Bio

Jessica Ocean has spent much of her career launching new ventures with ambitious visions aimed at contributing to a better world. In 2021, she founded a nonprofit called Psych Crisis aimed at transforming the mental health crisis system. She and her team bid on and landed a government contract, and by 2024 Psych Crisis was operating a 24/7 mental health emergency response program under a multimillion dollar contract with the Sutter and Yuba county governments that employed 20+ mental health first responders. Several times, Psych Crisis responders had the unfortunate opportunity to respond to 911 calls police had turned down and save the life of a person during an overdose. Prior to Psych Crisis, she managed teams in the cryptocurrency industry; designing automated monetary policy systems to make currencies stable, managing the implementation of bridge protocols to allow currency networks to be interoperable, and building communities for developers.

Prior to her move to the US in 2017, Jess lived in Sydney, Australia where she founded and directed an independent touring circus company, which produced a blacklight bodypaint circus show called Luminous. Luminous toured the Australian festival circuit for several years, earning festival awards and national media coverage with its mesmerising visuals and selling out 500-seat theatres with a live circus show reminiscent of James Cameron’s Avatar and Cirque du Soleil. This work and Jess’s championship-winning bodypainting art earned her a spot as a contestant on Hollywood reality TV show Skin Wars, the only non-US participant ever to compete on the show. You’ll have to watch it to find out how she fared (it’s on Hulu!).

Jess has a Masters in Economics and a Bachelors Degree in International and Global Studies majoring in Government and Latin American Studies from the University of Sydney. She has been a part of the San Francisco coliving community since her arrival in 2017 and lived in and co-operated several community houses. In her spare time she throws potlucks to bring together local families, practices tai chi, writes essays and poems, and makes homebrewed software with Claude Code. She became a mother in 2024 and is founding the Open Immanence Society because she wants to create a beautiful world for her children and others’ to grow up in.