Jessica Pretorius grew up in Cape Town and London and graduated with a BSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics (LSE). She interned at the Embassy of Bahrain in London and at the Cocktail, a digital consultancy based in Madrid. After graduation, she volunteered at a refugee center in Cyprus run by Refugee Support Europe, as well as a refugee center run by Collateral Repair Project in Amman, Jordan. She speaks Spanish, Afrikaans, French and some Arabic.