Dr. Marissa Jablonski is a development engineer and educator who collaborates and cooperates with transdisciplinary groups worldwide wrestling with complex concerns related to water,  sustainability, and culture. As an engineer, she communicates across boundaries to help people gain access to ideas and infrastructure to meet their needs.  As an educator, Marissa leads professional development experiences where she coaches and mentors engineers and leaders towards an integrative holistic way of thinking that incorporates collective problem solving.

Marissa is a mentor to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) student chapter of Engineers Without Borders, advising on the design and implementation of water distribution projects in Guatemala.  She also serves as the International Coordinator of a Guatemalan-led and run NGO that builds infrastructure to meet indigenous communities’ needs.

Marissa is a 2017/19 AAAS Science Technology & Policy Fellow where she serves in USAID’s DCHA Bureau in the Office of American Schools and Hospitals Abroad.  Before this she was a faculty member of the Masters of Sustainable Peacebuilding program at UWM, where she wrote and instituted courses focusing on community engagement in international development fieldwork, especially integrating her work in Latin America and Asia.  Marissa is an advocate for minorities and women in STEM fields and served as program coordinator of UWM’s NSF FORTE program during 2009-2015.  During that time, she also designed an internationally recognized project that continues to engage with informal dye industries in rural India to affordably clean their wastewater.

• Location: Milwaukee, USA