In 2005, while still an undergraduate at Brown, Beckerman co-founded Muso, an organization that works to eliminate maternal and child mortality in the developing world through a combination of health care and preventative medicine. Muso’s model for proactive doorstep healthcare was based on Beckerman’s experiences as an HIV researcher in Mali, where she regularly saw children dying of HIV and other preventable or curable illnesses. Beckerman earned a BA in international development in 2006 and returned to Mali as a Fulbright Scholar in 2007, continuing to build Muso’s model and team. She then joined Partners in Health as a project manager, designing health systems for marginalized patients. She earned a medical degree from the University of California at San Francisco in 2014, and has since remained in San Francisco as a resident physician in obstetrics and gynecology. But her primary focus has remained Muso, which has grown to include more than 100 staff, serving 100,000 patients and cutting the child mortality rate ten-fold in Muso communities.

Jessica Beckerman is a grantee of the Jewish Women’s Fund of New York (JWFNY), and is featured as part of a partnership between JWA and JWFNY spotlighting Jewish women social entrepreneurs.