I am a New York City native by way of Washington, DC, where I graduated from Georgetown University with my bachelors and masters degrees in Global Health. Though my studies were spread across the world, I have taken to heart the public health mantra to “lean on the local” and turned my focus inward to help address health problems in my home context of the United States. While conducting my thesis research in southern Mexico on nutrition education programs in primary schools, I fostered a passion for promoting the importance of proper nutrition and an active lifestyle. Since moving to Denver, I have loved being able to spend so much time outside in the sun and engaging with local community gardens and farms.

 

I first heard of the Slow Food movement from a sticker in a restaurant window while traveling through Chile almost 5 years ago. Since then, my desire to help our globalized world reengage with local food systems in order to internalize understanding of the interconnectedness of healthy people and a healthy planet has grown. Armed with the context of a public health education and the belief that people can change their behavior, I believe the impending crisis of chronic lifestyle diseases, a collapsing climate, and a dependence on the industrial food chain can be mitigated. To do so, we must make the synchronicities of these complex issues more tangible and palatable for the average person. Sharing meals and educating people, especially children, to be considerate of the journey their food has taken to get to them is the first step in this process.