‘I set out to follow a question that wouldn’t leave me alone.’

A young girl with red hair sitting on the floor with hands clasped, wearing a floral dress and white tights, inside a home with a plant and furniture in the background.

Origin Story

Founder. Field Researcher. Lifelong What-If Explorer.

Welcome to Imagination HQ and the Bureau of What Ifs—where curiosity, play, and possibility have been officially reintroduced.

I’m Jessika von Innerebner. I opened the door.

How the Bureau Began

I’ve spent decades inside complex environments—organizational, creative, and personal—observing how people (myself included) navigate uncertainty, change, and those awkward moments when the old rules quietly stop working.

I’ve seen what happens when imagination is dismissed as impractical.
And I’ve seen what happens when it slips back in through a side door.

Again and again, the same pattern appeared:

People weren’t lacking intelligence, experience, or effort.
They were lacking permission—permission to wonder, to question the obvious, to explore alternatives before pledging allegiance to certainty.

The Bureau of What Ifs emerged from that realization.

Not as an escape from reality—but as a way back into it, with more options unlocked.

A Grounded Background

(Yup. This Is Real.)

My background spans multiple disciplines and environments—and begins with leaving a religious cult and allowing my imagination to do something it hadn’t been permitted to do before: dream big.

Once freed, it didn’t waste any time.

I set out as a self-taught illustrator and world-creator, landing my first professional illustration job at seventeen. Animator and author eventually joined the skill set, and from there I worked across entertainment and publishing—collaborating with some of the most recognizable names in the industry, including Disney, Marvel, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, Penguin Random House, Scholastic, and more.

I’ve occupied many roles across many realities—from entry-level to leadership—navigating moments of creative transition and growth where old maps no longer worked, and new ones had yet to be drawn.
(At times, literally.)

Several sketches and a colorful digital illustration of cute cartoon characters, including a character with a food block head, in playful indoor and outdoor scenes.

But to reduce my story to clients or credentials would miss the point entirely. What matters more is what those environments—across an entire life—taught me:

•How imagination behaves under pressure.
•How play survives inside structure.
•How possibility re-emerges when people are given the right conditions to think differently.

The practices inside Can You IMAGINE? are not speculative exercises or abstract philosophies. They are science-based and distilled from years of applied experience—watching imagination operate inside constraints, during uncertainty, and in moments that actually matter.

This work is imagination, taken seriously.
(With generous helpings of fun.)

Why Imagination

(And Why Now?)

Animated girl wearing a crown and a pink tutu, holding a cat, standing on toppled stone columns in a park.

Strangely, somewhere along the way, imagination was labeled childish, optional, indulgent—sometimes even dangerous—when in fact it is one of the most POWERFUL tools we have for navigating uncertainty, change, and complexity.

When we lose access to it, we default to beige repetition.
When we restore it, vivid possibility returns.

The Bureau exists to help people remember they’ve forgotten how to imagine.

Here, we don’t just assist with imagination restoration—we investigate what scared it off in the first place, and how to keep this remarkable human capacity strong, resilient, and well-fed.

My Role Here

Inside the Bureau, I am not a guru, nor an authority on your inner world.

I am a field researcher and guide—someone trained to design conditions where your own insight can surface. I walk alongside participants as they explore their assumptions, narratives, and imaginative range.

I don’t tell you what to imagine. I help you notice what you’ve stopped imagining—and why.

A woman with short blonde hair wearing a tan wide-brimmed hat and tan coat, taking a selfie on a balcony with a waterfront and mountains in the background.

…an invitation

If you’ve found your way here, you are simply curious.
And curiosity, when taken seriously, changes everything.


If your work engages imagination, play, curiosity, and possibility in meaningful ways, the Bureau welcomes collaboration and conversation.

Reach out
-we’re always curious.

let's talk further

Verified Accounts

(Documentation originating outside the Bureau)

From time to time, the work of the Bureau—and its founder—has been observed, discussed, and documented beyond our walls. These conversations explore imagination not as fantasy, but as the needed puzzle piece for leadership, creativity, and human possibility.


Below are a few recorded sightings for those who prefer third-party confirmation:

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