Jessica Hernandez is a Maya Ch’orti and Binnizá-Zapotec Indigenous environmental scientist, activist, author, and researcher at the University of Washington.
Maria de Jesus, a member of the Zapotec community in southern Mexico, passed down the rich teachings of indigenous traditions to her granddaughter, shaping her understanding of their ancestral ways.
[2] Hernandez's father's experiences during the Salvadoran Civil War, including a story about banana leaves saving his life, inspired her book's title.
[7] During her college career, there were some difficulties in her research due to professors claiming that her work was missing citations or that what she was stating did not have scientific merit.
[4] Outside of her accomplishments at the University of Washington, Hernandez was named in the top 100 of Central America’s most powerful women in 2022 by Forbes magazine.