My story
Who I am, and why I'm back
I served on the Jackson Town Council from 2021 to 2024, shaping policy on housing, childcare, and equity. In 2024, I ran for mayor and lost, and I spent the two years since out of office, watching — which taught me as much as being in the room did. I'm running again by choice, not habit, because the problems that pulled me into this work haven't been fixed.
I'm the person who reads the whole Comp Plan and keeps it on her desk. I'm the one who asked, years ago, why we were siting a school before the wastewater infrastructure to protect the water around it. I ask uncomfortable questions about how our money is spent and how our rules play out on the ground.
“I showed up for this community while surviving one of the hardest things a woman can endure — and I am not ashamed of a single day of it.”
Beyond the Council
I've walked through almost every chapter a woman can face — a difficult childhood, complicated love, motherhood, public life, loss, and the long, messy work of finding my voice again. What I eventually discovered was that healing isn't about returning to who we were — it's about becoming who we were meant to be.
I founded FoxARC Coaching to offer what I once needed: grounded, trauma-informed support for women standing at the edge of what's next. I completed advanced certification through Mentor Agility's Trauma-Informed Coaching Program, accredited by the International Coaching Federation and the National Board for Health & Wellness Coaches, and I'm licensed in the Hero's Journey® Change Model through the Joseph Campbell Foundation. I hold a Master's in Education from the University of Southern California and a Bachelor's in International Studies, Culture, and Communication from The City College of New York.
I live in Jackson Hole with my husband, son, and two cattle dogs. When I'm not coaching, I'm usually outside — skiing, paddle boarding, or writing. I'm at work on a memoir about my own heroine's path, a story about becoming, belonging, and the quiet strength it takes to start again.
My mother's name was Sandra Fox, and foxes have guided the arc of my own journey the way she did. In many cultures the fox stands for adaptability, intelligence, and the ability to move between worlds — intuition meeting strategy. That is where the name FoxARC comes from, and you're welcome to poke around over there.
The absences in my last term
During my last term I missed meetings, and every absence was excused by the Council under the rule I brought to it; before that rule, the Council had no procedure for excusing an absence, even though W.S. 15-1-107(a)(iii) vacates a seat after four consecutive regularly scheduled meetings missed without one. The reason for my absences was not public at the time. I was asked to testify as a witness in the federal criminal trial of Robert Hadden, the Columbia University OB/GYN who sexually assaulted more than 700 women, and I was one of a small number who came forward under our own names while most others remained anonymous. Preparation began in December 2022. The trial in January 2023 brought sequestration and court dates in New York, and the case dragged on; the judge contracted COVID and court was cancelled for a week, and on the day I read that notice I met Hadden at the elevator door. I had prepared to take the stand and was stopped just before I was called. He was sentenced six months later, on my forty-second birthday.
Around the sentencing a full-body rash began that lasted the next nine months. The strain of that period also brought torn ligaments, two surgeries, and a hospitalization for an infection my doctors connected to it. During the same months people were campaigning against my reelection, and I worked through the 2024 campaign season; my attendance in 2021 and in 2024 was in the middle of the Council. The strain of defending myself caught up with me physically after I left office. The record of the four years is in the Council’s resolution under What I am proud of, and the Clerk’s count of every meeting is below.
I put my name on that case so that the next woman would find it harder to be silenced, and I am telling it here in my own words so that you have it from me.
The Town Clerk’s tally, 2021 through 2024
The Town Clerk keeps a sheet of every Council meeting and who was there, and the figures below come from that sheet, with each meeting matched to its agenda on the Town’s meeting portal. The Clerk counts meetings, and the Council usually holds two or more on the same day, so a week lost to a trial, a surgery, or a hospital stay shows up as several missed meetings rather than one.
In 2021 and 2024 I missed 11 meetings of 143; over the same two years the other four members missed 4, 8, 13, and 16, which put me in the middle of the Council. From December 2022, when preparation for my testimony began, through the end of 2023, a year that held the trial, two surgeries, and a hospitalization, I missed 32 of 76. In April 2023 I attended every regular meeting and missed six special ones. In the first eleven months of 2022 I missed 13 of 73, on ten dates.
The statute that governs attendance, W.S. 15-1-107(a)(iii), counts only consecutive regularly scheduled meetings missed without an excused absence; special meetings are outside it. Thirty-five of my fifty-six absences were special meetings, and each absence was excused under the Council’s rule.
Absences by member and year, all five members
The Clerk’s sheet covers every member of the Council, and the chart below shows each of us by year. In 2021 and 2024 my column sits with the rest of the Council, and 2022 and 2023 are the two years described above.
The same numbers as a table
The sixteen meetings with 90 Virginian Lane on the agenda
Four absences, all special joint meetings between May and September 2023. I was present for the land-acquisition bond terms in June and July 2023, the developer selection in May 2024, and every ground-lease meeting in the fall of 2024. The posting column shows when the Town published each agenda; the 2023 special meetings were posted on the Thursday or Friday before a Monday meeting, the ones I attended and the ones I missed alike.
Every meeting, with filters
| Date | Called as | Meeting | Status | 90 Virginian Lane item | Agenda |
|---|
Source: Town of Jackson Clerk, Mayor and Council Meeting Attendance 2021–2024. Codes on the Clerk’s sheet: blank, present; Z, present remotely; A, absent. Both December 18, 2023 meetings are blank for every member on the Clerk’s sheet and are shown as not recorded. Agenda links open the Town’s meeting portal.
What the job requires
This job is reading the packet before the meeting. It means knowing which section of the regulations a decision turns on, asking the question nobody has asked, and voting when the vote is hard. Jackson has real problems that ordinary competence would solve, starting with a budget that no one with municipal finance training has ever reviewed.
Councils before mine made room for raised voices, thrown objects, and entire meetings spent on an argument between two people who were never going to agree, and that behavior was described as passion. Arriving with the staff report read and asking a question that has not been answered gets described as difficulty. Those are the two things Jackson is choosing between in November.Jessica Sell Chambers
These are working notes from my term: a workforce council, a sustainability and resiliency department, a climate commission, each mapped against the Comprehensive Plan chapter it would serve. The book is the one I keep beside the Comp Plan.
Most people here are working, and the loudest demands on the Council often come from the people with the most free time and the least information. I would rather make it possible to understand a land use decision in ten minutes than complain that nobody is paying attention, which is what this site is for.
Coverage this cycle
I asked the Jackson Hole News & Guide, more than once, for its election coverage policies and for the rules governing how candidate answers would be handled, and I did not receive them. I answered the paper’s voter guide questionnaire within its limit of 100 words per answer, and the same answers appear on this site under Answers, alongside my answers to the ShelterJH questionnaire, so that what I said is available in full regardless of what is printed.
Questions people ask
Why are you running again?
The problems that first brought me into this work remain unresolved: a housing program that produced expensive units and a collapsed negotiation, budgets that no professional reviews for efficiency, and land use rules that keep putting water and local businesses at risk. I am running by choice rather than habit.
What would you do first?
Bring the Land Development Regulation amendments the Council workshopped in January 2026 back to a vote, starting with lot aggregation and the floor area caps, and adopt a no-contact rule and a public repository before any second solicitation for 90 Virginian Lane proceeds.
What happened at 90 Virginian Lane?
The Town and County selected a developer for an affordable housing project on public land, negotiated for years without a signed development agreement, and voted to terminate the negotiation on July 14, 2026. The full sequence, with source documents, is at 90virginian.netlify.app.
Can you work well with others?
I work well with people who come prepared. Ask me what I built with colleagues who disagreed with me and I will give you the list. The question I would put back is what we are measuring, because a Council that spends a meeting on a personal argument and calls it collaboration is not working well with anyone. The Council’s own account of the four years is Resolution 25-02, adopted January 6, 2025, under What I am proud of.
Should the Town keep the Flock cameras?
I voted for the original contract in 2023, and renewal is never a given: each time it comes before me I weigh privacy against safety, and if the safeguards fall short I vote no. My full answer is under Answers.
Who funds this campaign?
This campaign accepts no PAC money and coordinates with no independent expenditure. Every contribution over $100 is published on this site within a week of receipt.
Why only one vote?
Two seats are open and you may mark two names. A second mark for anyone else helps that person reach the second seat ahead of me. Marking only my name is legal and counts in full.
Anything else: email me. No account, no name required, and I answer in my own words.