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Construction:
Jacqueline S. Homan broke ground becoming the first woman plasterer in an all white male construction trades union in 1989. She has had first-hand experience dealing with the obstacles and ramifications of gender discrimination in male-dominated fields. Her construction experience also inlcuded being a union steward, representing others who lodged grievances against management.
Learning Disabilities Advocate:
After a car accident in 1991 took Jacqueline out of the workforce for several years, she overcame the nearly insurmountable obstacles of poverty, dyslexia, and age as a non-traditional aged student to earn her Bachelors Degree in mathematics and computer science with a minor in physics from Kutztown University of Pennsylvania.
During her own struggle with dyslexia, she joined the non-profit group Learning Disabilities Association of America of Pennsylvania and became a volunteer advocate for parents of children with learning disabilities in the Philadelphia-Allentown area. While attending Kutztown University, she worked as a peer tutor in mathematics and physics in the academic support lab. Her color-coding techniques were adopted uniformly by Dr. Jane Becker, Dean of the Academic Support Department. All other peer tutors were shown this technique for helping those for whom learning is difficult - those with learning disabilities. Jacqueline graduated in 2001 at the age of 34.
Death Penalty Appeals Cases:
While attending college, Jacqueline worked in the maintenence department of the Allentown Hilton Hotel where a co-worker approached her, desperate for help for his brother, Rick Laird, who had been convicted of murder and sentenced to death. Jacqueline singlehandedly marshalled all relevant documents and researched previously overlooked legal issues in Mr. Laird's capital case. She was instrumental in obtaining help for Rick Laird from the Philadelphia Capital Defenders Association. Rick Laird was granted a new trial on appeal and his second trial commenced in February of 2007 - eleven years after Jacqueline procured the evidence and grounds for Laird's appeal in 1995 . Her second non-fiction book "Eyes of a Monster" which was published in June of 2008 reveals the classism that influences law enforcement and judicial processes, what the legal appeals process for death row inmates entail, and her experience and direct involvement in such a case.
Stockbroker/Financial Planner/Insurance Agent:
During her final semester in college in 2001, Jacqueline began training and working in the finance and investment banking industry. Her experience inlcuded options trading, hedging, foreign currency options contracts, and stock analysis. Although her job with a brokerage firm was truncated due to the events known as 9/11, Jacqueline continued working as a property & casualty insurance agent, starting up her own independent agency with nothing but her licenses after a 4 year fruitless job search during which the reality of age and appearance discrimination against women forced Jacqueline into the self-employment route as a theater of final resort.
Although the odds at success were highly stacked against her due to a very real lack of resources and access to credit, Jacqueline's property & casualty agency showed promise - until the unaffordable gas an oil prices of 2007 impacted her customer base so negatively that she had to close her agency. It was after this that Jacqueline pursued writing as more than a hobby or a release. She has been a contributing editor and writer of feature science and technology articles on best-selling author Edwin Black's online news journal "The Cutting Edge News". Her writing in the science and technology area spans the breadth of everything from the demotion of Pluto from planet status to global warming, to genetics.
Social Activism For Socio-economic Justice:
Her concern about the social and economic injustices against the poor (most whom are women) in our society due to age, sex, race, and appearance discrimination fueled her determination to prove that America is not the meritocracy everyone thinks. She gives a stunningly brutal inside look at just how classism serves to keep those in poverty (mostly women) "in their place", and how corporate America rigged the game against the middle class in her non-fictionbook "Classism For Dimwits" .