Dr. Jennifer D. Roberts is a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, School of Public Health at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD). She is also the Founder and Director of the Public Health Outcomes and Effects of the Built Environment (PHOEBE) Laboratory as well as the Co-Founder of NatureRx@UMD. This initiative emphasizes the green space benefits interspersed throughout the UMD campus and acknowledges the ancestral lands of the Piscataway People along with the historical slave trade legacies of the UMD campus land.

In recognition of her NatureRx@UMD accomplishments, Dr. Roberts was awarded an REI Cooperative Action Fund to create and establish the Wekesa Earth Center, a collaborative effort of scholarship and recognition across multiple disciplines to promote equity, reconciliation, and healing in nature. She now serves as the Executive Founding Director of the Wekesa Earth Center and oversees the four arms of the center: (1) research; (2) recognition; (3) programs; and (4) dissemination. The fourth arm, named Zorabelle’s Garden, is dedicated to Dr. Roberts’ late great grandmother.

A native of Buffalo, New York, Dr. Roberts’ graduated from Buffalo Seminary High School and received her Bachelor of Arts (AB) degree from Brown University.  She holds a Master of Public Health (MPH) degree from Emory University Rollins School of Public Health and earned her Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.