Jacobson was born in Rochester, Minnesota, and is Jewish. Her parents are David Jacobson, a member of the 1974 U.S. National fencing team in saber who was an All-American fencer at Yale University and now an endocrinologist, and Tina Jacobson, who also fenced competitively. She is the sister of fellow U.S. Olympic team fencer and Junior World Champion Emily Jacobson, and fencer Jackie Jacobson. Jacobson swam competitively for two years in high school. She postponed her college career to train full-time for the 2004 Summer Olympics. Her hometown is Dunwoody, Georgia, and she has lived in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2000. She graduated with a history degree from Morse College, Yale University. She studied history at Yale University.
Fencing career
She trained at Nellya Fencers from a young age. She has been coached by Arkady Burdan of Nellya Fencers, and Henry Hartunian at Yale.
College & Under-19 career
Jacobson was a 2-time NCAAsabre champion for Yale University. She won an NCAA Championship and earned 1st-team All-America honors as a freshman at Yale, after a 30–0 regular season. Jacobson was 29–1 as a sophomore, and repeated as NCAA champion. In addition, she was the 2001 Under-19 National Champion. In 2003, she won the World Junior Fencing Championships in women's epee.
Jacobson is a 4-time Senior World Championships team member. She was a member of the gold-medal 2000 Women's Sabre World Championship team at the age of 17. She won another bronze medal at the 2006 World Fencing Championships sabre competition. In her first individual World Championships in 2001, Jacobson placed 12th. She placed 5th in 2002 and 2003.
Jacobson won the gold medal in sabre at the 2003 Pan American Games.
National Championships
Jacobson won the US women's sabre championship in 2004 and 2006. She was ranked # 1 in the US from June 2003 through October 2005.
Number 1 World Ranking
In 2004, at 19 years of age she became the first U.S. woman to be ranked No. 1 in the world in sabre, and only the second U.S. athlete to claim the title, after male fencer Keeth Smart.
Olympic medals
Jacobson won the bronze medal in women's sabre at the 2004 Summer Olympics, the first year that event was hosted at the Olympics. Her match took place before the gold-silver match, and therefore Jacobsen became the first women's sabre Olympic medalist. She won the silver medal in individual sabre and bronze in the team sabre event at the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Post-fencing career
Jacobson indicated that she intended to retire from competitive fencing after the 2008 Olympic competitions concluded, and focus on law school, and starting life with her fiance. She graduated with a law degree from the University of Michigan Law School in 2011. She and Brendan Brunelle Bâby, who graduated from Pennsylvania State University where he competed in épée and was a member of three NCAA championship teams, were married in May 2009 in Atlanta at the Nellya Fencers Club, where she had trained for both the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics. As of 2015, she practiced commercial litigation for McKenna Long & Aldridge.
Awards
Jacobson, who is Jewish, received the Marty Glickman Award for the Outstanding Jewish Scholastic Athlete of the Year in both 2002 and 2005.
She was named Academic All-Ivy League for 2002.
In 2003 Jacobson was named the U.S. Fencer of the Year.
