Featured Woman in STEM: Jess Phoenix
Jess Phoenix is a vulcanologist—a geologist specializing in volcanoes—as well as an ecological activist and advocate. She runs a website under the name Vocano Jess, where she shares her work and her passion for science literacy. Watch her describe the intense experience of studying volcanoes in this short video:
Education, Interests, and Achievements
Phoenix received a bachelor's degree in history from Smith College in 2005 and a master's degree in geology from California State University, Los Angeles in 2010. She also completed work towards a Ph.D. in geology at Queensland University of Technology. She began working as a geologist in 2008.
In 2015, she was elected to the highest level in The Explorers Club, which she describes as “the world's foremost professional society for the advancement of field research and the preservation of the instinct to explore.”
Phoenix is also a co-founder of Blueprint Earth, an environmental nonprofit that focuses on ecological preservation:
We are cataloging all of the geology, biology, hydrology, and atmospheric conditions in a square kilometer of California’s Mojave Desert. Our goal is to understand how everything functions together, as a system - from the microbes to the clouds.
—website for Blueprint Earth
Where Science Meets Politics
Jess Phoenix is an outspoken advocate for representative democracy, climate change action, and public policy supporting advancement in science. Watch her interview on the PBS program Open Mind here:
profile picture from phoenix’s twitter account
In 2018 she ran for Congress in California's 25th Congressional District, but did not win the election. In an interview with the New York Times, she described approaching political office from an ecologist’s standpoint:
I want to make our community a global hub for green technology and also emphasize cybersecurity….We need to address climate change because it is a national security threat. It’s both an environmental issue and an economic and public safety issue as well…I look at everything as systems.
