Jessica Neely, an Oakland native, joined KQED in 2004 for the R&D and pilot phases of QUEST. She is a graduate of University of California Davis with a bachelor’s degree in evolution and ecology, and she holds a single subject teaching credential in biology and general science from Mills College. She began her career at the Sacramento Zoo in educational programming and outreach. She then taught high school science at San Lorenzo High School for four years where, for three years, she was the Science Department chair.

Neely ran the national educational outreach for the first season of Jean Michel Cousteau: Ocean Adventures in 2006 and returned to QUEST as the science education guru.