Jenna Bryant

As a nonprofit leader at MDC, Jenna Bryant works to advance economic mobility across the South by strengthening the systems, partnerships, and policies that help families and communities thrive. Her work focuses on issues that shape opportunity, including education, work, caregiving, student debt, tax policy, benefits access, and the infrastructure families need to build stable and meaningful lives. She often finds that caregiving is central to economic security and mobility because it affects whether people can remain employed, pursue education or training, and participate fully in their communities. Through this lens, she champions policies, designs and incubates programs that support family caregivers, strengthen access to care, and create a stronger infrastructure of opportunity so that the next generation has the chance to live more secure, healthy, and opportunity-rich lives.

These issues hit close to home for Jenna after her father’s dementia diagnosis in 2018. Jenna’s father Miles Talmadge Bryant served in the U.S. Army in Air Defense and was stationed in El Paso, Texas in the early 1960s. Later, he served three years in the Army Reserve. Jenna does not have a great record of his time in uniform. Miles separated from the service the year she was born and has since forgotten most of his Army years.

Miles’s now lives with Lewy body dementia, a progressive neurocognitive disease that affects cognition, memory, communication, sleep, mobility, and daily functioning. The disease is especially challenging because the symptoms can fluctuate and evolve. His needs can change quickly, and the treatments that worked at one stage may not work at another.  

As his caregiver, Jenna helps manage and respond to these changes by providing and coordinating care. She tracks symptoms, supports safety and daily routines, and advocates so his needs and preferences remain central as his conditions progress. She has managed to continue her research, program design, and professional advocacy work while providing care, though she has definitely felt the financial pain that she sees in other caregiving families. The costs of medical equipment, home health aides, household supplies, and home modifications have added up.  

Jenna finds resolve in the fact that her father is doing well, despite his challenges. As a Dole Caregiver Fellow, she is ready to advocate for stronger systems of caregiver support in America, with an emphasis on policies and programs that help family caregivers remain connected to work, navigate available economic supports, access student debt relief and tax credits, and build more secure lives for themselves and their loved ones.