Jessie Zarazaga
Associate Director, Hunt Institute For Engineering & Humanity
Dallas, Texas, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJessie Zarazaga is an interdisciplinary landscape-urbanist, architect, and geospatial scientist with nine years of focused experience in GIS-driven sustainable urban development and spatial literacy. As Associate Director at SMU’s Hunt Institute and longtime leader of SMU’s Initiative for Spatial Literacy & GIS, she blends academic leadership, teaching, and applied design to shape equitable, beautiful urban environments. Her work spans continents—from Fulbright research in Valparaiso to community-driven projects in East Africa and Texas—using creative participatory mapping and infrastructure design to connect culture and place. Trained at Cambridge, Harvard GSD, and SMU (PhD in Applied Spatial Design), she synthesizes architectural theory, theatre-informed design sensibilities, and cutting-edge geospatial methods. Known for investigating temporal and social flows—shared dining, wind, water—and their imprint on territory, she leverages that insight to produce layered environmental, social, economic, and cultural impacts. Based in Dallas, she uniquely bridges rigorous scholarship with hands-on community engagement to operationalize landscape infrastructures that improve urban life.
9 years of coding experience
17 years of employment as a software developer
High School Diploma, High School Diploma at Maru-a-Pula School (MaP)Art & Science (design) / Theatre Design, Art & Science (design) / Theatre Design at Williams CollegeBachelor of Architecture - BArch, Bachelor of Architecture - BArch at University of CambridgeWalnut Hill School for the Arts(additional studies towards PhD), Histories and Theories of Architecture, (additional studies towards PhD), Histories and Theories of Architecture at Architectural AssociationCambridge Fellowship, Architecture, Cambridge Fellowship, Architecture at Harvard University Graduate School of DesignDoctor of Philosophy - PhD, Engineering: Applied Science (Spatial Design, GIS & Creativity in Engineering Education), Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Engineering: Applied Science (Spatial Design, GIS & Creativity in Engineering Education) at Southern Methodist University
Github Skills (10)
java2
digital-humanities2
esri1
gis1
creative-commons1
geospatial1
arcgis1
data-management1
spatial-analysis1
geography1
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
zarazaga/StoryMaps-Tutorial-Kenya
Feb 2020 - Jan 2024
Contributions:33 pushes, 1 branch in 3 years 11 months
zarazaga/ImpatientGIS
Jun 2020 - Sep 2021
Contributions:116 commits, 98 pushes, 1 branch in 1 year 3 months
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