Catching Up with Jessica Badour

Jessica Badour was a member of Cohort IV of the Fellowship in Food Protection program. At that time, she was the Recall & Outreach Specialist in the Food Safety Division at the Georgia Department of Agriculture. During her fellowship, she applied for and was selected to be an IFPTI Jr. AFDO Board member and attended the 2015 AFDO Fall Board Meeting in Washington, D.C. with her fellow cohort Bryan Buchwald.

Since completing the Fellowship, Jessica began taking on more external association affiliations. In 2015, after presenting on her IFPTI research at that year’s AFDO Annual Education Conference, she became the Co-Chair of the Partnership for Food Protection’s Outreach Workgroup and was asked to join Joe Corby in Co-Chairing the AFDO Administrative Committee.

In 2015, she ran and was nominated for the successive position of Secretary of the Georgia Environmental Health Association and served as GEHA President for the 2018-2019 term. In 2016, she ran and was nominated for Junior Board Member with the Association of Food & Drug Officials of the Southern States and was AFDOSS President from 2019-2020, currently serving as Past-President on the board. She is also an active member of various other local, regional, and national organizations.

In 2021, the Georgia Department of Agriculture promoted Jessica to Rapid Response Team Program Manager & Outreach Specialist. In this role, she focuses on food-related incident management and recall communications, while facilitating educational and promotional outreach opportunities.

“The year-long IFPTI Fellowship experience expanded my knowledge of food protection and provided so much more background about how the food safety system in the U.S. has been established. After completing the Fellowship, so many additional opportunities have come my way; I believe most of which are directly related to the exposure I received while presenting my research during the AFDO AEC in 2015. To this day, the other fellows in Cohort IV remain close friends of mine, and we all continue to keep in touch about our work endeavors. Getting into the Fellowship is one of the best things I ever did for my career, and I continue to reap the benefits of the experience, even now, six years later! “