Adventure outward.
Discover within.

A career in communication

Mackey’s professional background spans public relations, marketing, technical communication and editorial production across technology, aerospace, telecommunications and the marine industry. His earlier experience includes Globalstar, Miller/Shandwick Technologies, Schlumberger Technologies and Genesis Communications Group. He later worked in marketing and communications at Bay Ship & Yacht Co. and Oceanus Marine Group, and served as marketing director at Moller International.

Through JM Public Relations & Marketing Consultancy and later marine-industry advocacy and communications work with DB Marine, he developed messaging, promotional programs and stakeholder outreach. Municipal outreach work in Milpitas added another perspective: understanding a community’s needs and making complicated information useful to the people affected by it.

Reporting, photography and the waterfront

As a Bay Crossings contributor, Mackey wrote the Delta Beat column and produced photography covering boating, ports, environmental issues, tourism and regional economic activity. That work reflects an enduring interest in the waterfront as a place where livelihoods, culture, infrastructure and personal experience meet.

He is the publisher of American Marine Journal, bringing recreational boating and commercial maritime subjects into one editorial frame. His work includes editorial planning, research, publication materials and production workflows that connect technical subjects with readable narratives and practical business questions.

Mackey founded the American Working Waterfront Heritage & Innovation Foundation, a California nonprofit public benefit corporation focused on maritime education, research and heritage preservation. His independent Port of Richmond research explores a proposed combination of working-waterfront activity, heritage interpretation, ferry and rail connections, workforce development and maritime education. This is an independently developed vision, not an appointment by or an official engagement with the Port.

Many shelves, one perspective

Jah Mackey Media brings his writing together across historical fiction, practical nonfiction, regional food and personal reflection. The eleven-book Julian St. Clair Mysteries follow a Black Creole attorney, sailor and former intelligence officer through questions of evidence, inheritance, identity and institutional power. Iron Skulls: Freedom Song explores liberation, chosen family and the work of building a community in novel and screenplay form.

The eleven-volume Delta Galley series approaches place through food and the realities of cooking and living in limited space. The California Edition and Provisions Volume are complete, with Mississippi next in development. The broader series connects regional culinary traditions with preparation, resourcefulness and the rituals that make a journey feel like home.

His personal nonfiction includes I’m Not Here to Make You Feel Better About Yourself, LIFE, Reflections on Life: An Odyssey Through Myth, Science, and Spirit, The Delta Anchor: A Blueprint for Rebirth, and My Boat, My Chapel. These projects approach self-respect, belief, humility, loss and renewal from different directions. Unity in Diversity considers shared life events across age and cultural experience, while Richmond’s War investigates the human and industrial history behind a city’s home-front legacy. The catalog includes completed manuscripts, developing works and planned volumes.

Research and emerging technology

Mackey also develops and evaluates AI-assisted research and editorial methods. He designed Marine Agent 1.4, a structured workflow using source verification, evidence registers, comparative analysis and editorial quality controls. His Nautilus prototype explores location-aware historical information, connecting curiosity about a place with the experience of moving through it. His recent work also includes contract-based AI development with Babel Audio involving audio and language data.

The life behind the pages

Living aboard a 1965 Chris-Craft Commander in California’s Delta gives Mackey a daily connection to the practical subjects in his writing: preparation, maintenance, limited space, water and the meaning of home. The boat is one part of a wider perspective shaped by communications work, travel, photography, reporting and a continuing willingness to question his own assumptions.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Public Relations from San José State University and an Associate of Arts in Communication and Media Studies from Evergreen Valley College. Across his work, the recurring inquiry is human: how experience becomes understanding, and how understanding can become a more deliberate way of living.