28th Class of Emerson National Hunger Fellows Announced

Jalen Banks
28th Class, 2021-2022

Originally from Virginia, Jalen graduated from UC Berkeley in 2021 with a major in Political Science and a minor in African American Studies. While at Cal, she served as Co-director of the Black Recruitment and Retention Center, tutored incarcerated students at San Quentin State Prison, performed extensive research on law enforcement conduct through the School of Public Health, and more. Jalen has a strong passion for racial equity and she recognizes that food justice is a crucial part of racial justice.

Julie Noreene Bautista
28th Class, 2021-2022

Julie Bautista was born in the Philippines and moved to Guam in her high school years. Her lived experience as a minority and living in an island rich with indigenous culture drove her to pursue a career in advocacy for historically marginalized groups and immigrant communities. She graduated from the University of Virginia as a Foreign Affairs major with a Religious Studies minor with Phi Beta Kappa Honors. She interned at the Nationalities Service Center, a refugee resettlement agency in Philadelphia, and became interested in religious and ethnic minority oppression. In the Fall of 2020, she became the Teacher's Assistant for Nobel Peace Laureate, Professor Jerry White, in his Religion, Violence, and Strategy course. As native from the Philippines, Bautista has also been interested in research on decoloniality and indigeneity. She worked as a Research Assistant has developed a policy proposal that utilizes the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a framework to advance the right to self determination of Religious and Ethnic Minority groups, specifically the Kurds in Syria. During her last semester at UVA, she started interning for the Congress of Nations and States, a new international body that is being organized to facilitate dialogue between indigenous nations and states’ governments in an equal political plane. She also attended the Food Policy Summit initiated by The Food-Policy Clinic at Batten which is in conjunction with the UN Summit on Food Systems that examines policies on food security and nutrition. The outcome of this event was forwarded to the UN to inform their formal Summit events this year. These previous projects she has committed to is an attempt to center the focus on the marginalized groups and advocate for human rights

Sofia Charlot
28th Class, 2021-2022

Sofia is a first-generation Haitian-American from Miami, Florida. She studied Anthropology & Human Biology and African American Studies at Emory University, where she was a member of the Lambda Alpha National Anthropology Honor Society, Residence Life, the Black Student Alliance, and the Emory Scholar's Program. Now, Sofia is a co-coordinator, farmhand, and member of a Black ecofeminist collective that champions sustainable food production as a praxis of racial, social, and environmental liberation. As part of the collective; Sofia supports mutual-aid, community building, and cultural preservation between black farmers who need labor and resources and young, black, and landless folks who love the earth. Sofia plans to pursue graduate training in epidemiology and sustainable food production in efforts to uproot oppressive food systems and practices that lead to higher rates of mortality and morbidity amongst BIPOC.

Paige Clay
28th Class, 2021-2022

Originally from Denver, Colorado, Paige Clay recently graduated with a B.A. in political science (concentration in U.S national politics) and Africana studies from the College of Wooster. Paige has always been interested in social justice and racial equity work, but her combined personal experiences with hunger and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) developed into an interest in food justice. As an undergraduate, Paige focused her efforts on exploring anti-poverty/anti-hunger research regarding low-income populations and food deserts. Before becoming an Emerson fellow, Paige worked as an undergraduate fellow for The Policy Academies where she pursued independent research on how SNAP participation and food access produce negative health effects on Black low income/low access (LILA) populations in Georgia. As an Emerson Fellow, Paige hopes to amplify vulnerable voices in marginalized communities to create more sustainable and equitable food systems.

Tenzin Dhakong
28th Class, 2021-2022

Tenzin Dhakong is a 1.5 generation immigrant from Minnesota. She graduated with distinction and Phi Beta Kappa honors from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (UMN). At the UMN, Tenzin was involved in a number of public service-centered programs such as the Public Policy and International Affairs Program, the Urban Scholars Program, and the Capitol Pathways program. She is passionate about educational equity and youth work. Recently, she served as Legislative Assistant for the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Robert Economou
28th Class, 2021-2022

Robbie grew up in New Rochelle, New York, and graduated from SUNY Geneseo with a degree in Sociology. While attending SUNY Geneseo Robbie served as co-chair of a student activist group called Food Security Advocates, where he educated fellow students about hunger on college campuses, created a food pantry delivery program for students during the covid-19 pandemic, and passed a college resolution to create an on-campus food pantry. In the summer of 2021, Robbie was a speaker for the New York State Food Summit to speak on a panel about college food insecurity. Robbie also served as an intern at the federal policy office for WE ACT for Environmental Justice, where he worked on policy briefs and conducted research to ensure that environmental policies considered the intersecting issues of racial justice, gender equity, and income inequality at all times.

Michelle Fausto
28th Class, 2021-2022

Michelle Fausto is a recent graduate of the University of California Los Angeles, where she studied Political Science and Labor Studies. During her time at UCLA, she interned at the Coachella Valley Rescue Mission, a local organization through which she engaged in citywide anti-homelessness advocacy and direct service work in food distribution and vocational training. Michelle also completed the Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) program last summer, where she devised a policy memo addressed to the San Francisco Food Security Task Force concerning the growing number of food insecure individuals in San Francisco, California. As a first-generation, low-income daughter of Mexican immigrants, Michelle’s experiences growing up in a disinvested agricultural community in the Coachella Valley and living in poverty-stricken Los Angeles have directly exposed her to poverty- and hunger-related issues that she hopes to work on during her time as an Emerson National Hunger Fellow.

Fleurian Filkins
28th Class, 2021-2022

Fleurian Filkins grew up near Keuka Lake in New York state, before transferring to Finger Lakes Community College to finish high school and earn associate degrees in Psychology and Liberal Arts & Sciences. During their time at community college, they engaged in queer community building and environmental advocacy, with a focus on gardening. Upon transferring to SUNY Geneseo to pursue a B.A. in Psychology, they became heavily involved in campus sustainability, serving as an Ecological Representative, a co-chair of Food Security Advocates, and a member of the President's Commission on Sustainability. In these positions, they wrote a policy proposal to put a food pantry on campus, co-developed a student-run food pantry delivery program, and obtained a grant to fund the creation of an indoor vertical garden.

Nathan Garcia
28th Class, 2021-2022

Nathan Garcia has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 10 years, on a range of issues from human rights to wildlife conservation. Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, he was first introduced to social justice work by local organizations combating human trafficking. After years of building grassroots marketing campaigns, and developing community outreach programs, he went on to become the first in his family to graduate from college; earning a degree in International Relations and Human Rights from the University of California, Davis. As a communication consultant, photographer, and filmmaker he has traveled throughout the United States and to over 20 countries, creating awareness campaigns, development strategies, and documentaries for organizations creating a more just and equitable world.

Amira Iwuala
28th Class, 2021-2022

Amira is a native of Roxbury, Massachusetts, where her lived experience shaped her passion in public health and social justice. She attended Northeastern University where she received her BS in health sciences with a minor in global health and Masters of Public Health. Amira first became interested in food justice during her undergraduate years when she volunteered at a local community center and taught nutrition lessons to low-income residents in Roxbury and provided food vouchers for families. Following this, she was a fellow in the Getting to Zero Health Initiative, AIDS Action where she worked in promoting community engagement in legislation that targets improving the access to comprehensive health education in marginalized populations. She plans to employ her experience in health policy, advocacy, and program planning to work on anti-poverty and anti-hunger initiatives that ameliorates health outcomes in minority and low-income communities.

Morgan McKinney
28th Class, 2021-2022

Morgan is originally from Ohio and graduated from Duke University with degrees in global health and public policy. During her childhood she split her time between living on a farm in rural Ohio with her father’s side of the family and in a small town just outside of Columbus with her mother. Over the past few years, she has worked as a research assistant with Duke Global Women’s Health Technologies to make cervical cancer screening more accessible for underserved women in Peru and the United States, sparking a more broad passion for social justice work. While food has always played a central role in her life, it was not until the Covid-19 pandemic that she pursued interests in food systems as a space connecting people to their physical and social environments and a fundamental intersection to a plethora of social issues, driving her interest in sustainable food supply chains.

Tazkia Shah
28th Class, 2021-2022

Taz Shah is a first-generation Kashmiri-American who graduated from the Johns Hopkins University in 2019 with a B.A. in Public Health Studies, where she researched and delivered community-based nutrition and health education in food-insecure and housing-insecure populations. After graduating, she worked as a policy consultant to the Sacramento County government, where she researched and proposed evidence-based solutions to end homelessness and helped mobilize resources to mitigate COVID-19 transmission among people experiencing homelessness. Since leaving Sacramento, she has consulted at a Baltimore nonprofit seeking to end malnutrition and food insecurity in communities of color through nutrition education. In the future, she hopes to work on local- and state-level public health initiatives that will end hunger, homelessness, and malnutrition.

Nitan Shanas
28th Class, 2021-2022

Born in Israel, Nitan moved at the age of 10 with his family to Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Nitan graduated summa cum laude from Rutgers University - Camden with majors in Psychology, Urban Studies, and Economics and a minor in Ethics. As a Bonner Foundation scholar, he has worked at a local homeless shelter and advocated on behalf of the city of Camden’s homeless population through various awareness campaigns including Rutgers Camden’s annual Hunger and Homelessness Week as well as his most recent initiative - the Rutgers Sleepout for Homelessness Awareness - which raised funds for a local homeless shelter. In his senior year, Nitan served as the student body president for Rutgers Camden as well as an intern at the National Homelessness Law Center before becoming an Emerson fellow.

Isabelle Sohn
28th Class, 2021-2022

Born in Philadelphia, Isabelle graduated from the University of Chicago in 2020 with a degree in History and a minor in Human Rights. While at school, she wrote her B.A. Honors thesis on the insularity of Korean food within the U.S. as connected to U.S. perception of the Korean "Forgotten" War and in broader conversation with factors of imperialism, racism, and food scarcity. Last summer, Isabelle interned with the organization Real Food Media, where she helped run digital communications across multiple platforms to highlight the work of partners of the Good Food Purchasing Programming combating food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. She previously worked at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, and at the International Rescue Committee; experiences that emphasized the necessity of situating those on the periphery as partners in community-building, research, writing, and considerations about policy.

Artis Trice
28th Class, 2021-2022

Artis is from Ellenwood, Georgia, and graduated from Kennesaw State University with a degree in geography, minors in Spanish and environmental studies, and a certificate in GIS. Guided by his passions for exploring connections between food, culture, and sustainable agriculture, Artis conducted research on community garden planning, which he presented to lawmakers in the Georgia General Assembly in Atlanta. He also participated in the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars Program at the University of Washington, where he worked in tandem to develop a food justice-based curriculum for youth at the Danny Woo Community Garden in the Chinatown-International District. As an Emerson Fellow, he hopes to continue learning about community food systems and their mitigating effects on hunger.

Blake Turpin
28th Class, 2021-2022

Originally from Montgomery, Alabama, Blake graduated from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville with a major in Sociology with a concentration in Criminology and Criminal Justice, along with minors in Hispanic Studies and Political Science. During his undergraduate career, his interests in social justice and poverty alleviation led him to work on a variety of projects looking at the criminal justice system's relation to poverty and oppression. Blake also spent time working on several local political campaigns and as an intern for the Federal Defender Services of Eastern Tennessee, where he discovered a passion for serving underrepresented and criminalized populations. As an Emerson Hunger Fellow, Blake hopes to work towards breaking cycles of criminalization, hunger, and poverty.

Alexandrea Wilson
28th Class, 2021-2022

Alexandrea is from Chicago, Illinois, and recently graduated with her masters in social service administration from the University of Chicago. Prior to graduate school Alexandrea served in the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps where she worked on health related projects where she began to understand the importance of food access in improving community health outcomes. Last summer Alexandrea worked with the Chicago Food Policy Action Council where she helped to build out an internship program aimed toward creating opportunities for underrepresented identities in environmental work. Alexandrea also created a podcast - Healing the Land where she aims to create dialogue that highlights BIPOC voices on the topic of racial and environmental justice.

Elaine Zhang
28th Class, 2021-2022

Elaine’s love language is food, but also food and language, as separate topics, are both of great importance to her; everyone eats and everyone communicates with others, but there are often barriers to both of these universals. Elaine explored these topics at UCLA while majoring in Linguistics and Asian Languages and Cultures and minoring in Food Studies and Environmental Systems and Society, graduating magna cum laude in 2020. Her interest in food security deepened as a result of working with the community gardens on campus, serving as a Teaching Assistant for an undergraduate course on urban agriculture, volunteering as a Master Gardener of Los Angeles County, and improving models of sustainable food systems as a Food Security Intern at the Center for Sustainable Development in The Bahamas. After returning to her hometown of Stockton, California, Elaine started a nonprofit organization that creates opportunities for folks to go beyond their good intentions and create meaningful change in their communities.