Jenkins served in the U.S. Army as a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, and afterwards became a music critic and journalist.
In the early 1980s, Jenkins was a guest lecturer at Seattle Opera for the company's production of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen.
[6] At Seattle Opera he has produced two complete cycles of Wagner's Ring, the first one directed by François Rochaix and the second one by Stephen Wadsworth.
He also produced new productions of the other six frequently produced Wagner operas, as well as new productions of Prokofiev's War and Peace, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Dvorak's Rusalka, Bellini's Norma, Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice and Iphigénie en Tauride, four Strauss operas, many by Verdi and Puccini, plus several contemporary works.
Jenkins stepped down as General Director of Seattle Opera in August 2014, and was replaced by Aidan Lang.