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Ryan was born in Munich, Germany on February 22, 1968. She was born the daughter of a career Army
master sergeant father and a social worker mother. Jeri's family moved back to the United States while she still a child.
As an "Army brat," she lived in Kansas, Maryland, Hawaii, Georgia and Texas, all by age eleven. Jeri graduated from Lone Oak
High School in Paducah, KY, in 1986, then attended Northwestern University, where she earned her B.A. in Theater in 1990.
While in college, she won the sixth annual Miss Northwestern Alpha Delta Phi Pageant in 1989. If you think she's all looks
and no brains, Jeri was also a National Merit Scholar. Jeri was Miss Illinois 1989 and competed in the 1990 Miss America pageant,
where she won the swimsuit competition and placed third runner-up. After graduation, Jeri set out on a career as an actress,
winning roles in numerous television movies and series including "Melrose Place", "The Flash", "Time Trax" and "Matlock".
Jeri performed film roles in two independent features, "Men Cry Bullets", and "The Last Man". Then came Star Trek " Voyager",
and Jeri joined the cast at the beginning of its fourth season, with the episode "Scorpion, Part II". Jeri is Seven of Nine,
which is short for Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero-One. After moving all over the United States, her family
settled in Kentucky. Jeri landed parts in the shows "Melrose Place, "Time Trax, " "Matlock, " and "Murder, She Wrote" before
getting picked by NBC to star in the show Dark Skies. She was in seven episodes until the show was cancelled. Nevertheless
those appearances were good enough to help her get the part of Seven of Nine in Star Trek Voyager.
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Seven, as she is usally referred too, is a sensual creature, neither fully Borg nor fully human.
Jeri has no problem with being sold as the sex symbol of Voyager. She says, "as long as the character is intelligently written
and gets challenging stories for me to play, I'm fine with it". After completing four seasons as Seven of Nine, Jeri is now
transitioning to a more contemporary role in the high school drama "Boston Public". Her character, Ronnie Cooke, is a disgruntled
former corporate lawyer who leaves her practice to become a teacher at the troubled urban high school. Episodes featuring
Jeri began airing in October 2001. Although an accomplished actress, Jeri considers her greatest role to be that of mother
to her son Alex. Jeri states, "Nobody could have convinced me while I was pregnant of how magical it would be to be a mother".
In her spare time, she enjoys snow skiing as well as cooking and baking.
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