Jessi Parfait, research associate, works as part of the Institute’s human dimensions team and is a proponent of collecting community knowledge to inform project development and decision making.

Parfait graduated from LSU with a bachelor’s in anthropology and is currently pursuing her master’s in anthropology at LSU which she expects to complete by the end of 2019. As a graduate assistant at Louisiana Sea Grant, she conducted research with her tribe The United Houma Nation studying how tribal members in Dulac and Golden Meadow, Louisiana have adapted to chronic and acute stressors. Through the project, she became passionate about stakeholder engagement and advocating for the use of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in planning processes. She also served as the archivist for her tribe for four years, digitizing thousands of documents and instilling in her a desire to give historical context to current issues.