Amari Ross

Neighborhood Resilience Project Manager

Amari Ross has a long personal connection to flooding as a Virginia Beach native who grew up near a creek that frequently overflowed. This experience shaped her interest in work that centers community knowledge, lived experience, and practical responses to a changing climate. She joined Wetlands Watch as Neighborhood Resilience Project Manager to support community-based resilience efforts and help residents, students, and partners better understand the local impacts of flooding and sea level rise.

Amari cares deeply about sustainability, especially within the built environment. Her work brings together architecture, research-driven design, material innovation, and ecological systems. She earned her A.A.S. degree from Tidewater Community College in 2022 and graduated from Hampton University in 2025 with a Master of Architecture with a concentration in Sea Level Rise. At Hampton, she participated in several courses connected to the Wetlands Watch Collaboratory Program, work she now helps carry forward through her role at Wetlands Watch. Her thesis project, “Mycelium-Bamboo Scalable Modular Structures,” explored sustainable materials for modular construction. During the final year of her master’s program, Amari began a Virginia Sea Grant Fellowship focused on environmental and social resilience in Grove, James City County, Virginia. At Wetlands Watch, she brings her academic training and fellowship experience to work that supports local resilience, community engagement, and more climate-responsive approaches to the built environment.