From 1994 to 1995, Jessica Stern served as Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council, where she was responsible for national security policy toward Russia and the former Soviet states and for policies to reduce the threat of nuclear smuggling and terrorism. Stern earlier worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

From 1998 to 1999, Stern was the superterrorism Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and from 1995 to 1996, she was a national Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Stern is a member of the Trilateral Commission. She is the author of Terror in the Name of God (HarperCollins, 2003), The Ultimate Terrorists (Harvard University Press, 1999), and numerous articles on terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. She received a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in chemistry, a master's of science degree from MIT, and a doctorate in public policy from Harvard.