Impression: Jennifer Van Vrancken

Councilwoman Jennifer Van Vrancken (NC ’92, L ’95) has lived other places, but the desire to help her hometown always brings her home. She tried to leave New Orleans as an undergraduate student, spending her first year of college at the University of Virginia but returning to Louisiana soon after. She said, “Being away made me realize how unique and special New Orleans is.”

After returning to Louisiana, she transferred to Tulane, where she stayed through law school.   

Van Vrancken, now the councilwoman-at-large for Division A on the Jefferson Parish Council, studied communications, with a minor in political science, as an undergraduate student in Newcomb College.

“As it turns out, that was such a good underpinning for me, now being in government, communicating with constituents all the time,” she said. “Those [majors] have been the foundation of everything I’ve done since then.”

She wasted no time after earning her undergraduate degree to attend Tulane Law.

Because Louisiana’s civil law-based legal system is unique in the United States, it was important to her to attend law school here, Van Vrancken said.

“I always knew I was interested in government and interested in leadership, and this is home,” she said.

While she enjoyed learning about law, Van Vrancken realized during law school that she didn’t want to be an attorney upon graduation. She instead decided to take her love and skill for public speaking into the field of journalism.

“I finished taking the bar exam, took a week off for vacation, and then came back and started working behind the scenes at WWL,” the local television news station, she said.

Van Vrancken also worked at other news stations in Louisiana, Alabama and Tennessee until 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans.

“I thought, ‘What am I going to cover in news that matters more than my hometown drowning?’” she said. So, she decided to move back.

As the business of news evolved over the next few years, Van Vrancken itched for a change. Her move into politics came when the then-incoming president of Jefferson Parish called to ask if she would consider leaving journalism. With her background in communications and law, he was eager for her to join the administration.

“It was a great opportunity to get up every day and work in the place I lived, and to be able to impact it,” she said.

Working as chief operating officer of the parish convinced her to run for a seat on the parish council in 2015, where she has served ever since.

“The really fulfilling thing is when you’re able to do something that impacts someone’s life positively, whether it’s directly helping them resolve an issue, or whether it’s redoing playground equipment somewhere, or renovating a library department that makes little kids light up when they go in,” she said.