Jessica Roberts joined Balmori Associates in 2013. During this time Jessica has been involved in a range of projects including the World Financial Center Plaza in NYC, a mixed-use urban project in Bogota, Colombia, a development in Doha, Qatar and Rebuild by Design, a competition to promote resilience for the Sandy-affected region.

She received her Master's in Landscape Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was the recipient of the Riley Fellowship, the Creative and Performing Arts Fellowship, the Wadsworth Scholarship and the Sasaki Award for Project of the Year.

During her graduate studies she completed a thesis entitled “Transparent Animism: a framework for participating in ecological design as agonism” which investigates how landscape architects might use animism, an ontological order where humans and nonhumans are both seen as social subjects, as a framework for participating in ecological design as agonism, a political theory that looks at political conflict positively. Her work is heavily influenced by her undergraduate studies in fine art with an emphasis on social art practice and new media.

 Jessica has experience working on organic farms in the Midwest and worked with the Chicago Park District on the design and implementation of Chicago’s only public fruit orchard. Her interests include the politics of ecology, collaboration as a creative praxis, and how methods of representation affect material realities.