Jennifer Blanks

Jennifer Rochon Blanks is the tribal coordinator and cemetery specialist for the Texas Department of Transportation and the founder of The Cemetery Sista, LLC. She is an environmental scientist, planner, and cultural resource management expert, rooted in scholar of environmental justice and critical geographies. Her work bridges natural resource protection and cultural heritage preservation, with a focus on African American burial grounds and memorialized landscapes in communities vulnerable to climate change. Blanks’ research analyzes geo-ethnographic data to assess cemetery risks and vulnerabilities, recover and document cultural landscape knowledge, and identify sustainable strategies for long-term cemetery management.