Jess Phoenix

She grew up in Colorado.[5] Phoenix holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Smith College and was introduced to geoscience during a visiting semester at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.[5] She earned a master's degree in geoscience from California State University, Los Angeles.[5][3] Phoenix entered the PhD program at the Queensland University of Technology studying Mexico's Sierra Madre Occidental range, but shortly left the program after falling out with her advisor.[1][5]

Phoenix has appeared in the Discovery series Trailblazers [6] in 2016, Devil Sharks [5][7] in 2017, appeared in Science Channel's series What on Earth? in 2015[8] and in 2021 was a co-host with Stel Pavlou on the Discovery series Hunting Atlantis.[9]

Phoenix is the co-host of the Discovery television series Hunting Atlantis, which has been criticized by scientists from the archaeology, anthropology, and history communities for pseudoscience and misrepresenting history and archaeology for entertainment purposes.[9][10] Jason Colavito, a skeptic and debunker of pseudoscience in popular culture, called Hunting Atlantis one of the worst, most incoherent, poorly written, and badly produced pseudohistory documentaries in its genre."[11]

Phoenix is married to Carlos Peláez and they both changed their names to Phoenix in 2012.[5] Together they founded Blueprint Earth,[12] a volunteer based non-profit focused on cataloging the ecosystem in one square kilometer of the Mojave Desert.[1][5]