Jessica Gray Project Coordinator

Where I’m from: I always find this to be an interesting question now that I live in a small town like Princeton — as most people who live here are from here, but I’m not really from anywhere.

I spent most of my childhood in Algonquin, IL, but I wasn’t born there. I was born in Elk Grove Village, IL, but I’ve never lived there. I’ve lived in Bensenville, IL, Leesburg and Herndon, VA, and Monmouth, IL at Monmouth College as a perpetually starving college student. Since then, I’ve lived in Princeton for 18 years with my husband, David, who is from here. It’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere, and I’ve enjoyed choosing where to grow roots. 

Things I enjoy: Watching Marvel movies and British crime shows with my family, the Jurassic Park series of movies and wearing movie pop culture t-shirts. I also enjoy attempting to get my teenager to laugh, family walks with our rescued coonhound, buying books, reading books, and organizing books in my home - basically anything to do with books - as well as gardening, puzzles, board games, and not being anxious. 

Something interesting about me: In 2018, not having successfully grown flowers before, I tore out our front yard and installed a Certified Wildlife Habitat, and made a pollinator garden from mostly native species.

Pollinator gardens and the No-Mow Movement are still relatively unknown ideas here, and I love the surprised looks the garden receives when passersby come upon our tiny butterfly and bee oasis. I am also the Steward for The Pollinator Garden Little Free Library #94541, located in the garden and maintain a large Medicine Wheel vegetable garden in our backyard.

I am also a co-founder of the trans partisan grassroots citizens’ movement, Voices from the Prairie, founded in January 2017 in Princeton. Voices from the Prairie is committed to promoting open, ethical, and fair governance and upholding the values of tolerance, fairness, and inclusion in American society and political life.

Why I love working with Midwest Partners: I enjoy brainstorming on creative and unusual ideas that help make Princeton a cooler place to live. I particularly thrive off projects that are simultaneously beautifying and useful. I think there are a wealth of untapped ideas that could put Princeton, IL on the map in ways that have not yet been considered.

Things like a community garden, you-pick fruit trees on our city streets to healthily feed the underfed, tiny houses for the unhoused, Co2 absorbing murals to brighten up empty buildings and purify the air, recycling opportunities to make recycling “exciting” again, a city ban on plastic bags, eliminating the use of Styrofoam containers at restaurants, normalizing and promoting rainwater catchment systems, and repurposing greywater, city-wide composting, solar panels, and zero-waste grocery stores. Just because we’re rural and small doesn’t mean we have to think and live small too. 

Nonprofits I support: The National Wildlife Federation, The Arbor Day Foundation, The Little Free Library organization, The Bureau County Historical Society, Children International, and the International Campaign for Tibet.