Jessi Richter is an agent with Crue Intellis.
That is a private security company that is owned by Jon Daly, aa former Selous Scout from Rhodesia. "We collect information." That is how Daly tells Richter in one of their early encounters to explain what it is his company does. A tad more informative statement would come soon to a police officer when Daly presents valid Department of Homeland Security credentials and explains that while his company was independent of any government control, "Homeland is one of our better customers".
Richter is around 31 years of age. She first comes into contact with Crue Intellis in the prequel adventure which explains the history of Richter. An altercation in Myrtle Beach with the ex-boyfriend of her sister, Kate, in a bar was turning particularly nasty when two other patrons stepped in to help. Those two men were Daly and one of his operatives. The interaction was brief but Daly handed her his business card with the offer of further help should she need it. She would find that she would indeed have use of it soon thereafter.
That adventure took place when she was 21 years old working as a waitress in Myrtle Beach. It explains how she saw that further assistance greatly needed as that boyfriend's anger turns homicidal. It also the time that Crue Intellis would discover a "skill" she had known about for a few years but was only now getting good with it, a skill that would prove incredibly useful to an intelligence gathering operation like Crue Intellis.
Richter has the ability to, as she calls it, 'slip-stream'. That is a paranormal occurrence in which her consciousness flows via touch from her body into another, totally dampening that person's control and granting Richter total command. While she has only partial success at extracting higher function memories, like names and passwords and the like, and this at a punishing penalty of a headache, she easily absorbs baser "muscle memories" such as driving a car or flying a plane or engaging in activities like martial arts.
When she completes whatever mission for which she has need of the host body, that person's memory of whatever activity Richter did is mostly gone and any faint vestige is recalled with a splitting headache by that person. Meanwhile Richter remembers without a problem.
For ten years prior to our meeting her for the first time (not counting the prequel) Richter has been an invaluable member of the Crue Intellis team.