---
title: "Jessica Talisman - Semantic Engineer & Ontology Expert | Context and Chaos"
url: "https://atlan.com/context-and-chaos/experts/jessica-talisman/"
description: "Jessica Talisman, MLS, is a semantic engineer and information architect with 25+ years of experience, founder of the Ontology Pipeline and The Knowledge Graph Academy. Follow her work on Context & Chaos."
keywords: "Jessica Talisman, ontology, knowledge graphs, semantic engineering, information architecture, taxonomy, RDF, OWL, SKOS, AI knowledge infrastructure"
---

> Atlan is hosting Context Conference, bringing together the leaders and builders at the frontier of giving AI the context it needs to understand their business. It runs online on October 28, 2026, from 11:00 AM to 2:00 PM ET. Atlan co-founder Prukalpa Sankar opens and closes the day. Leaders from AstraZeneca, BNY and Verizon share why they invest in context and what they get from it. Registrants get early access to The AI Context Gap, a new study from MIT Technology Review Insights. Register: https://atlan.com/context-conference/

Context & Chaos expert profile: **Jessica Talisman**, Semantic Engineer & Information Architect / Contextually LLC.

Jessica Talisman, MLS, is a semantic engineer and information architect with 25+ years of experience spanning library science, taxonomy, ontology modeling, and enterprise knowledge graph development. She is the founder of Contextually LLC and creator of the Ontology Pipeline - a progressive semantic knowledge management framework - and founder of The Knowledge Graph Academy, a cohort-based training program for semantic engineers. Previously a Senior Information Architect at Adobe (where she architected an RDF-based knowledge graph for the Digital Experience ecosystem) and information architect at Amazon, she is authoring a book titled "Ontology Pipeline" scheduled for Fall 2026 publication.

## Expertise and background

- **Expertise in:** Ontology Design, Knowledge Graphs, Semantic Engineering, Information Architecture, Taxonomy & Metadata, RDF & OWL, SKOS, AI Knowledge Infrastructure
- **Specialty:** Semantic Engineering & Ontology Expert
- **Experience:** 25+ years in information architecture, ontology design, and enterprise knowledge graph development
- **Notable work:** Founder, Ontology Pipeline framework and The Knowledge Graph Academy; Senior Information Architect at Adobe (RDF knowledge graph for Digital Experience); Book forthcoming "Ontology Pipeline" (Fall 2026); Featured in Women In Data Influence in Data + AI Map
- **Certifications:** Smithsonian Fellow Scholar; Design Thinking MicroMasters, edX / Rochester Institute of Technology

## Resources

- C&C Issue: [Ontologies, Context Graphs, and Semantic Layers: What AI Actually Needs in 2026](https://atlan.com/context-and-chaos/issue/ontologies-context-graphs-and-semantic-layers-what-ai-needs-in-2026/)
- Article: [The Semantic Infrastructure Opportunity](https://jessicatalisman.substack.com/p/the-semantic-infrastructure-opportunity). Why the convergence of AI capabilities and enterprise semantic infrastructure is creating a once-in-a-generation opportunity for organizations that have invested in knowledge graph architecture.
- Talk: [Context Graph and Process Knowledge](https://neo4j.com/videos/context-graph-and-process-knowledge-jessica-talisman-contextually-llc/). A Neo4j talk on how context graphs enable AI systems to reason about process knowledge - the implicit understanding of how work gets done that is rarely captured in structured data but critical for AI agents.
- Podcast: [From Big Data to Big Meaning - The Hidden Architecture of Knowledge](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuRckjVVU-k). Jessica on why the enterprise AI wave is forcing a reckoning with knowledge architecture - and why the semantic web community saw this coming 20 years ago.
- All issues: [the full Context & Chaos library](https://atlan.com/context-and-chaos/)

## Connect with Jessica Talisman

- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jmtalisman/
- X / Twitter: https://x.com/JessicaTalisman
- Substack: https://jessicatalisman.substack.com/
- Personal site: https://www.ontologypipeline.com/

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