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About Jessica Yinka Thomas
Jessica Yinka Thomas is a novelist with a background in toy design and social entrepreneurship. As managing director of the Center for Sustainable Enterprise at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, she has authored several award-winning academic articles. Jessica has worked as a designer of interactive educational toys, as the director of a social enterprise business plan competition and as a program manager for a community development nonprofit. How Not to Save the World is her first novel. Jessica’s writing highlights her twin passions for technological innovation and for creating significant social change through entrepreneurial ventures.
Growing up in West Africa and traveling around the world has provided her with a rich background from which to draw in her writing. She lives in Arlington, VA with her husband, Jeff Forbes and their son Xavier. Jessica enjoys knitting in the winter and competing in triathlons during the summer. She holds a BS in Engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
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The Interview
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I’m inspired to write because I see storytelling as a compelling mode to engage people in big ideas. How Not to Save the World follows the story of Remi Austin, a fundraiser for the African Peace Collaborative (APC), a conflict resolution nonprofit founded by her late mother. Frustrated by her inability to raise funds and faced with the imminent closure of the APC, Remi turns to a life of crime to keep her nonprofit afloat. From Sydney, to Tokyo, Geneva and Cape Town, Remi transforms from a fundraiser too shy to speak during staff meetings into a daring international art thief who must stop a war from breaking out and figure out how to save herself from a life behind bars. With the help of her best friend, a designer and inventor who creates gadget-packed gowns, Remi eludes a dashing insurance agent and a terrifying stalker, all while redistributing the wealth of the world, one work of art at a time. My hope is that everyone who reads my work will think about how they can find their personal path to leaving this world better than the way they found it.
If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?
My father. He is an economist and would never define himself as a writer although I have a shelf full of his academic publications. He has committed his life to demonstrating how technology can be a powerful tool for social change. He is my writing role model in many ways.
Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?
I started my professional career as an engineer, designing interactive educational toys. I started doing consulting work for smaller start-up toy companies where I would work for several months and then take a few weeks off to travel. As a way to continue to explore the creative side of my brain, I started out writing nonfiction travel stories as I traveled around the world in my twenties. Before then, I shied away from creative writing because I thought of myself a techie. I read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way while traveling across Australia and wrote in big capital letters at the close of the book, “I will write a novel!” Reading that book 13 years ago was a transformative process that exposed the writer in me.
Can you share a little of your current work with us?
I’m working on a sequel to How Not to Save the World, which is the second book in the Remi Austin Adventures trilogy. The sequel is tentatively titled How Not to Make Friends. I’m shooting to complete it this year. I don't want to give too much away but here is a sneak peek. How Not to Make Friends is a suspense novel set in a world of high culture, high fashion and high-tech gadgetry, about a band of three friends who make a pact to solve the world’s problems, big and small.
Have you ever had writer’s block? If so, what do you do about it?
I’ve never had a moment of writer’s block. The page is the one place I can funnel all of the ideas swirling around in my head. Rather than conducting research, I travel, read what I love, use my day job for inspiration and pull all of that into my writing. With a generous amount of editing,
