Jessica Ann Levy is a historian of politics, racism, and business in the United States and Africa. Her current book project, Black Power, Inc.: Corporate America, Race, and Empowerment Politics in the U.S. and Africa, under contract with the University of Pennsylvania Press (Modern American Politics & Culture Series), examines the rise of black empowerment politics, including government and private programs promoting black entrepreneurship, job-training, and other kinds of commercial activity during the late twentieth-century. The dissertation on which this book is based was awarded the the 2019 Betty Unterberger Dissertation Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR). 

Levy's research has received the support from numerous institutions, including the  Jefferson Scholars Foundation, the Hagley Library, the German Historical Institute, and the Johns Hopkins' Program in Women, Gender and Sexuality.  Prior to coming to UVA, Levy was a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University. She received her Ph.D. in History from Johns Hopkins University in 2018. She also earned an M.A. in Social Science from The University of Chicago.