Beau Jessup, daughter of actress Lisa Maxwell, dies at 27

Beau Jessup, a Columbia journalism student who created a website at 16 to help Chinese parents pick English names for their children, has died at 27.

Columbia Journalism School announced her death Wednesday in an Instagram post. The school said it "mourns the loss" of Jessup, who was in its master's program, and joins her family, friends and classmates "in remembering her." Neither her family nor the school has disclosed a cause of death.

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Jessup was the daughter of British actress Lisa Maxwell and her husband, Paul Jessup. Maxwell spent seven years starring in the British police drama The Bill and has been a panelist on the talk show Loose Women.

"As the daughter of a television actress, I grew up with an unusual awareness of the distance between people's lives and the stories told about them," Jessup told Columbia News in October.

Columbia News had approached Jessup that month for Notebook, its series profiling students. She died after the interview and after reviewing an edited version with the publication, which later published it in her memory with her family's permission.

School offers condolences

Columbia Journalism School Dean Jelani Cobb described Jessup as a "cherished member" of the school community in an email to students. "There is no easy way to share news of this nature and I recognize how painful it is to receive messages like this one," Cobb wrote.

Cobb offered condolences to Jessup's family and friends and said a loss in the school family is difficult to process. The school said it was working with her family to provide support and assistance.

Maxwell and Paul Jessup have not made a public statement about their daughter's death, Page Six and Silive reported.

A website that named babies

In her October interview, Jessup said she had been curious "from quite a young age, about who gets to tell people's stories, and what happens when those stories enter the public domain." She said journalism could bring people's experiences to light, but it could also reshape them into public narratives that subjects had little control over.

Jessup began a weekly local newspaper column in England, Beau's Community Bakes, at 16. Through recipes, she opened conversations with older people, many of whom were experiencing loneliness.

She created SpecialName at the same age. The idea followed a trip to China, where a business associate of her father asked Jessup to help name the associate's three-year-old daughter in English, the Daily Star reported.

The website let parents select five characteristics they wanted, then used an algorithm to suggest three English names that matched. Jessup initially made the service free, introducing a 60p charge after it had named 162,000 babies.

"The site unexpectedly attracted international media attention, and eventually led to a TEDx talk I gave about how and why I had helped name around a million babies," Jessup said.

The earnings helped Jessup pay university fees and invest in property, as well as repay a £1,500 loan from her father that had funded the business. BusinessCloud included her in its Top 101 Female Founders of Tech in 2017 and its 35 Under 35 list in 2018.

"I've never really thought of those projects as entrepreneurial ventures," Jessup said in the October interview. "I was less interested in starting businesses than in finding ways to connect with people," she added.

Studies and a first play

Jessup later studied social anthropology at the London School of Economics and writing for performance at the University of Cambridge. During her master's at Cambridge, she wrote her first play, The Sandbag, about how family, memory, the body and inherited narratives shape the stories people tell about themselves.

At Columbia, she was pursuing an M.S. in Journalism and was due to graduate in May 2027.

"I don't drink, but I've discovered a new love of New York mocktails," Jessup said. "Pappardella on Columbus Avenue does a great non-alcoholic Moscow Mule," she said.

"I want to work as a journalist and writer, reporting on people, culture, and social questions with the rigor I'm learning at Columbia," she said about her plans after graduation.

Jessup said she was represented by THORO Artists in New York and was preparing to workshop The Sandbag there. "If I can arrange a table reading of The Sandbag in Pulitzer Hall, I'll technically be able to claim my first play was performed on Broadway," she said. "Geographically speaking, at least," she added.