Jesrell serves as mission director at Stratum, the Initiative's second, more compartmentalized facility at Isidis Planitia. Authorizing deployment when Stratum comes under threat is, for Jesrell, a familiar kind of decision — the details are new, the weight of making it isn't.
Jesrell's relationship to the Initiative's biological chain of command is more complicated than the org chart suggests, in ways the mission only starts to understand later.