Jackson spoke about growing up in Colma, where her family was the first to integrate the neighborhood. She remembers watching Bloody Sunday on the news, and for many years was afraid to go to church because of it. Throughout high school she was told to set her sights low, but with her family’s support she pushed to reach further. “There were so many people who made that possible for me,” she recalls. “They each put a stone on the pathway. And I’m here—and you are here—to add another stone to someone else’s path, a path that some people have worked for and died for in the past.”

Speaking about being a woman in law, she said, “They talk about breaking the glass ceiling, but let’s build a new building. I envision a building where no one knows how big it is, how wide it is, how long.”

As a judge, Jackson says that the most important thing she can assure defendants is that she will be fair and let them have a voice.

Jackson reserves every Friday afternoon as a time to speak to anyone who makes an appointment. She invited students to see her and “just talk.”

Director of Diversity Angela Birts presented Judge Jackson with a portrait painted by Menlo art teacher Dr. Nina Ollikainen.

Jackson was born in 1957 to Beatrice and Alson Jackson. After watching the movie To Kill a Mockingbird, she developed an interest in the justice system. Jackson graduated from Jefferson High School at the age of sixteen and began her studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she earned her BA degrees in politics and history in 1977. She then went on to earn her JD from Georgetown University Law School in 1980.

Upon passing her bar exam, Jackson was hired as a deputy district attorney of San Mateo County, where she works as a trial attorney. Three years later, she began work as a prosecutor for the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, serving in the domestic violence unit, the felony charging unit, and the felony sexual assault unit. Throughout her career, Jackson has worked to combat domestic abuse in the Bay Area. In 1988, she became the first person to successfully introduce expert testimony regarding elder abuse syndrome in a court case. In 1995, she co-founded the First Offender Prostitution Program (FOPP), a rehabilitation course for individuals arrested for their involvement with prostitution. The program was replicated in other American cities within years of its founding. Jackson became the first woman to head up a homicide unit in the state of California upon her promotion to head district attorney’s homicide unit in 1997.