Jacqueline is responsible for educating and advising Playground and its portfolio companies on international, national, and state government policy and helping craft strategies on non-dilutive funding pathways, dual-use market opportunities, regulatory positioning, and public policy-related advocacy and thought leadership.

Before joining Playground, Jacqueline was the inaugural Director of Government Affairs at PsiQuantum – a Playground portfolio company building the world’s first useful, fault-tolerant, error-corrected quantum computer. Before PsiQuantum, Jacqueline spent over fifteen years in the federal government, culminating her public service to date as the acting Deputy Director and Chief Performance Officer of the Department of Defense’s (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, where she founded and fielded GAMECHANGER – the DoD’s first AI-enabled policy/legal analytics platform.

Jacqueline began her career at the Central Intelligence Agency, leading a team of futures analysts to inform technical collection system planning and acquisition. She then transitioned to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, where she led Intelligence Community (IC) policy planning. Jacqueline went on to hold multiple senior roles at the Defense Intelligence Agency, including as a counterterrorism mission manager, policy advisor to the Deputy Director, and chief of customer engagement. Following a decade of executive branch service, Jacqueline joined the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence as a senior professional staff member, where she oversaw the defense intelligence portfolio before returning to the Department of Defense to advise the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security on enterprise modernization.

Jacqueline holds a BA in French with a minor in classical vocal performance and a MPAff. from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as an MA in National Security and Strategic Studies from the U.S. Naval War College. A true policy nerd and hot yoga enthusiast, Jacqueline lives with her husband and young daughter and rescues pups in Arlington, VA.