Jackie received her PhD in Anthropology from the ANU in 2011. Her thesis examined the ways in which Indigenous Territorians engage with enterprise development as a means of pursuing self-defined community development agendas, and the different sets of values, social and economic practices, and contemporary modes of being, which inform this engagement.

From 2008 to 2014 she worked at the Aboriginal Areas Protection Authority, the statutory body created under the Northern Territory Aboriginal Sacred Sites Act. Her current research focuses on Indigenous knowledge of the marine environment, and the management strategies deployed by coastal Indigenous groups.