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We have a whole new crop of interns joining the Nourishing the Planet team this fall. Today, meet Yuka Kato.

Yuka Kato

Yuka is currently an undergraduate student of Yokohama City University in Japan, where she is studying International Relations with a focus on International Politics. Since this past August, she has taken part in the Washington Semester Program at American University, where she is studying International Law and Organizations. During her time abroad in Washington D.C., she is looking forward to gaining an academic understanding of International Law, working on food and agriculture issues, and meeting new people who are passionate about working to solve the global issues.

After Yuka interned at Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Liaison Office in Japan in this spring, her interests in food and agricultural issues became much stronger, especially in conserving traditional agricultural systems. While she interned there, she studied Chinese and Japanese pilot agricultural systems of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS) and analyzed the common key elements for the traditional and sustainable agricultural systems. Although she is volunteering at a nonprofit organization focusing on innovations for developing countries, she is also interested in the innovations and potential of private sectors.

She is enjoying her time in D.C. by discovering the city, visiting museums and other famous sightseeing spots, meeting and chatting with people from all over the world, and trying new restaurants and sweets, though she misses baking cakes, especially cheese cakes.

Yuka is very happy to work as a research intern for the Nourishing the Planet team, and looks forward to learning about food security, practical ways to approach the food and agricultural issues, sustainable agricultural practices around the world, and how to deal with the huge changes in global society. She wants to use this opportunity to broaden her horizon and knowledge as well as contribute to the work of the Nourishing the Planet.

For more information on how to apply for an internship with Nourishing the Planet, click here.

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We have a whole new crop of interns joining the Nourishing the Planet team this fall. Today, meet Rachael Styer.

Rachael Styer

Rachael is a recent graduate of Yale University, where she majored in Environmental Studies. She focused her studies on environmental history and wrote her award-winning senior thesis on the history of agriculture in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She has a keen interest in sustainable agriculture and global agricultural policy and hopes to spend her career advancing good farm and food policy at home and abroad.

After her freshman year at Yale, Rachael traveled to Bologna, Italy, to work with her brother on a small organic herb farm for the summer.

During her time on the farm, she learned the rudiments of small-scale farming and living an organic lifestyle. The following summer she pursued her interest in energy policy by living and working in the mountains of West Virginia while working on anti-mountaintop removal mining issues with the non-profit group Coal River Mountain Watch.

Back at Yale during her junior and senior years, Rachael wrote for the National Geographic Great Energy Challenge Blog and the Yale Undergraduate Law Review and served as a juror for the Environmental Film Festival at Yale.

Rachael is very excited to be a part of the NtP team, and hopes to further the project by learning more about agricultural policy around the world and its implications for human and environmental health.

She takes a very interdisciplinary approach to her research and writing, and always appreciates feedback on her blog posts from knowledgeable NtP readers!

In her free time, Rachael loves to read books by witty female comedians, complete the daily crossword, snuggle with her maine coone Cooper and spend time with her friends and family.

For more information on how to apply for an internship with Nourishing the Planet, click here.

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We have a whole new crop of interns joining the Nourishing the Planet team this fall. Today, meet Carol Dreibelbis.

Carol Dreibelbis

Carol is a recent graduate of Princeton University, where she studied anthropology and environmental studies. Carol was fortunate enough to grow up in a family that traveled frequently—from national parks across the United States to the foothills of the Himalayas—and these experiences left her with a deep appreciation for and a drive to protect the natural world.

During college, Carol was a leader of the student sustainability group Greening Princeton, a member of the student-faculty group Greening Dining, an officer in the Princeton University Band (she plays flute), and a member of the campus vegetarian dining co-op. She also received funding through Princeton to spend a summer doing conservation-focused volunteer work in Madagascar with the NGO Azafady.

Carol focused her studies on the anthropology of food and eating. She wrote her senior thesis, “(Not Quite) as American as Apple Pie: An Ethnographic Study of the Place of Vegan Dessert Shops in American Culture,” on the cultural and environmental implications of veganism in the United States. Carol spent the summer before her senior year doing field research at a vegan donut bakery in Seattle, and then interviewed customers at a vegan ice cream shop in New York City to round out her research.

Beyond studying food, Carol also loves to make food. She has been vegan for almost five years and loves to bake anything with chocolate. She also enjoys writing, so she keeps track of her recipes through a blog. When she is able to get outside of the D.C. metro area, Carol enjoys hiking and camping with her family and playing with her family dogs.

Carol hopes to return to school soon to continue research on American foodways. In the meantime, she is thrilled to be a part of the Nourishing the Planet team.

For more information on how to apply for an internship with Nourishing the Planet, click here.

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We have a whole new crop of interns joining the Nourishing the Planet team this fall. Today, meet Devon Ericksen.

Devon Ericksen

Devon graduated from the University of Virginia in 2012, with a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology and a minor in Global Sustainability. Studying anthropology at UVa stimulated her interest in the relationship between culture and food, as well as the role of women in agriculture.

While at UVa she worked with local organizations on projects to reduce the energy use of low-income homes in Charlottesville. She also captained the school’s club ultimate Frisbee team for two years, travelling to tournaments across the country and discovering great food that cities such as Boulder, Colorado, and Austin, Texas have to offer.

Devon’s love of sustainable food was developed by her parents. Her dad taught her the value of healthy and delicious cooking, and her mom’s backyard garden in Ashland, Virginia produces raspberries, peppers, cantaloupes, corn, and much more. She enjoys learning about urban farming, and recently began volunteering with Renew Richmond, an organization that creates community gardens in Richmond, VA.
Devon also enjoys photojournalism and visual storytelling, and once spent a summer as a photographer for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. She hopes to apply her creative skills to the Nourishing the Planet project to spread the word about sustainable agriculture innovations and the brilliant people behind them.

Her hobbies include hiking, cooking, and making her own sunscreen.

For more information on how to apply for an internship with Nourishing the Planet, click here.

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We have a whole new crop of interns joining the Nourishing the Planet team this fall. Today, meet Kristen Thiel.

Kristen Thiel

Kristen is a recent graduate from Indiana University Northwest with a Masters in Public Administration where she studied public policy evaluation and statistical methodologies for public policy.  While there, she designed and completed a statistical study of the global coffee market, identifying ways to increase efficiency and greater farmer sustainability.

For her undergraduate degree, Kristen attended the University of Maryland at College Park where she received a Bachelor of Science in environmental science and policy with a concentration in economics.  At Maryland, she studied natural resource and agricultural policy, as well as the economics of developing countries.  Her experience includes a summer abroad program in Costa Rica where she had the opportunity to study the tropical ecology and social issues of the region.

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We have a whole new crop of interns joining the Nourishing the Planet team this fall. Today, meet Victoria Russo.

Victoria Russo

Victoria is a recent graduate of Vassar College, where she received a degree in International Studies with focuses in Political Science and Geography. In her senior year she completed an analytical research thesis on the Peruvian agricultural system and the potential effects of genetically modified organisms there. An important part of Victoria’s undergraduate experience was writing for La Voz magazine, a Spanish-language publication that focused on social justice issues including immigrant rights, urban food access, and education.

In her junior year, Victoria spent 3 months in mountain villages in Peru, where she partnered with the international non-profits ProWorld and Peru’s Challenge as a volunteer. During her time there, she was able to assist in health and education projects including building cleaner-burning cook stoves, creating water filters, and teaching English to school children. Victoria’s experience in Peru was pivotal to her interest in food security, and more importantly allowed her to build relationships with locals and achieve and more hands-on understanding of international development.

Victoria’s interest in food and agriculture began at a young age, and she has pursued this interest through working as a farmhand and environmental educator at Sprout Creek Farm. She was also deeply affected by her experience working as an AmeriCorps volunteer in their Energy Express program, in which she mentored a classroom of 4^th grade students and provided nutritional meals to them during the summer months.

In her spare time Victoria loves to hike, garden, read, and play ultimate frisbee and soccer. In the future, Victoria hopes to travel and gain more hands-on experience in international development and public health. Victoria hopes that in her time with Nourishing the Planet she will learn to use her academic understanding of global challenges to help create sustainable solutions.

For more information on how to apply for an internship with Nourishing the Planet, click here.