Born in New York City in 1954, Jackie Sherman learned that her mother, Doris Regensburger, had to flee Nazi Germany as a young teenager. Along with her parents, Alfred and Johanna Regensburger, Doris and her sister, Marianne, emigrated to the United States in 1940 after a sojourn in England. Doris was sent in February 1939 on a Kindertransport after experiencing the horrors of Kristallnacht in her hometown of Fürth, near Nuremburg. Alfred, a bombardier in the German Army during World War I, helped to save other Jewish veterans from incarceration in concentration camps before escaping with his family.

Having owned a successful textile business in Germany, the Regensburgers struggled to start over in the United States, and their experiences as refugees of the Holocaust left a lasting impression on Jackie and her family. For Jackie, this manifested in part as a deep curiosity about different ways of living and being in the world. After graduating from high school in Englewood, New Jersey, Jackie studied economics at Tufts University and the University of Michigan, studying abroad in England and later traveling to Burkina Faso to work in economic development. Ultimately, Jackie settled in Atlanta, Georgia, where she has balanced her time between a career in strategic planning and executive coaching and serving her community through service on various nonprofit boards. It is her hope that students learning about her family's story will gain a deeper understanding of how history affects real people and why it is important for all of us to work to prevent genocides like the Holocaust from happening anywhere in the world.