Jeri founded Spann Communications, LLC (SC) in 1987 after a management career in Wisconsin city and county government (Madison, Wisconsin, 1977–1986). The business was designed to help address a growing need for communications professionals able to assist organizations working in the public interest.

Preparing promising young people to take up this work is another of Jeri's professional missions. She teaches Writing, Advocacy, and Public Policy to graduate and undergraduate students at Carnegie Mellon University as an adjunct member of the English faculty. She has developed new curricula in deliberative rhetoric (advocacy communications) and contributed ideas toward the development of a new certification program in Public and Professional Writing at the University of Pittsburgh.

Jeri's degrees include a BA in English from Goucher College (Towson, Maryland), an MPA in public policy and administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an MFA in writing from the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned the Distinguished Teaching Award.

Jeri has served as a trustee on the boards of Voices for America's Children (formerly the National Association of Child Advocates) and the First Unitarian Church of Pittsburgh. An amateur artist, she is a published poet, a watercolor painter, a member of the Plein Air Painters of Western Pennsylvania. She also sings and plays percussion in a local folk orchestra.

 
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