Jessica Diaz

Jessica Diaz is a 2024 Knauss Executive Fellow at NOAA in the Office of the Under Secretary/NOAA Administrator. In this position, she is a member of the Under Secretary's Infrastructure team that oversees the implementation and organization of ~$6B for NOAA under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and Inflation Reduction Act investments.

Originally from Houston, Texas, Jessica grew up in an environmental justice community and keeps this experience at the core of her work. She left Houston to pursue a B.S. in Fisheries & Wildlife at Michigan State University with minors in Music and Science, Technology, Environment, & Public Policy (STEPP) and received training in equity and justice in the environmental field as a scholar of the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at Northern Arizona University. Jessica completed her M.S. in the Marine, Estuarine, & Environmental Sciences Graduate Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC). She was a UMBC ICARE (Interdisciplinary Consortium for Applied Research in the Environment) Trainee, focusing her thesis research on oyster restoration in the Baltimore Harbor with an emphasis on community engagement. In her free time, Jessica enjoys playing music, backpacking, gardening, traveling to see friends and family, and spending time with her partner and two cats.