29th Class of Emerson Hunger Fellows Prepare for Orientation, Community Placements Across the U.S.

Nick Battles
29th Class, 2022-2023, and 4th Class, 2021

Nick is from Indianola, Iowa. As of May 2022, he is an alumnus of Iowa State University with Bachelor of Science degrees in Global Resource Systems and Agriculture & Society (agricultural and rural policy studies), plus a minor study in Learning & Leadership Sciences. In 2017, he spent time interviewing farmers in rural India as a Borlaug-Ruan International Intern and, in 2019, collaborated with peers from around the world while studying at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. Prior to joining the 29th class of Emerson Fellows, Nick worked as a Legislative Aide at the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC), an opportunity made possible thanks to his initial stint at FRAC as a Zero Hunger Intern in the summer of 2021. Anti-hunger work has shaped much of Nick’s path for nearly a decade and he is thrilled to continue learning and leading as an Emerson Fellow.

Jazmyne Brooks
29th Class, 2022-2023

Jazmyne is originally from West Texas, where her lived experience with issues such as industrial agriculture and community disinvestment cultivated her passion for developing systems that center and nurture community, health, and the environment. Jazmyne has been a community organizer and nonprofit professional for five years advocating for reproductive justice and election access throughout Texas and Colorado. Jazmyne’s interest in food justice emerged when she consulted for a coalition of community organizations working to establish a grocery co-op on the Eastside of Denver. Following that experience, she completed the Urban Leaders Fellowship in 2021, producing a policy memorandum highlighting barriers facing SNAP users. Most recently, Jazmyne completed a Masters of International Development with a Global Environmental Change and Adaptation certificate at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies.

Allison Bunyan
29th Class, 2022-2023

Allison is from Los Angeles, California where she graduated from CSU Northridge with a BS in Global Supply Chain Management and a minor in Economics. While in school, she worked in many fields such as transportation planning, international affairs, economic development, and public policy. During her 2019-2020 service as a Peace Corps Mongolia health education volunteer, she became interested in the connections between sustainable agriculture, environmental health, and public health, which led her to pursue work in organic farming, environmental conservation, and food systems development. Now, Allison joins the 29th cohort of Emerson Fellows to work towards building a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable food system.

Isabella Dresser
29th Class, 2022-2023

Isabella is a first-generation American from Hartford, Connecticut. She recently graduated summa cum laude from Trinity College in May 2022, double-majoring with honors in Political Science and Human Rights Studies. During undergrad, Isabella interned and participated in various organizations and programs in the field of public interest including the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Connecticut General Assembly, and the Public Policy and International Affairs Program. Her personal and professional experiences have culminated into a passion for advocacy, especially for marginalized communities like her own.

Lauren Drumgold
29th Class, 2022-2023

Lauren is a native of Harlem, New York City, where she grew up observing economic, social and health inequities in her neighborhood compared to the more affluent communities across the city. She graduated from Bates College in 2019 where she received her B.S. in Biology with a minor in African American studies. Following undergrad, Lauren worked with City Year AmeriCorps in Harlem, New York, where she provided academic and social-emotional support to middle school students and facilitated after school programming. After graduating with her masters of public health from Washington University in St. Louis in May 2022, Lauren is excited to utilize her strengthened public health skills to support the efforts of organizations working to fight poverty and hunger in the U.S.

Aliyah Fard
29th Class, 2022-2023

Originally from Denver, Colorado, Aliyah Fard recently graduated with a B.A. in environmental politics from Whitman College. Aliyah has always been interested in the overlap between environmental issues and racial injustices and her interest particularly in food justice and equity was ignited by working with organizations that collaborate with multiple farms around Denver where Aliyah grew and distributed food in low income neighborhoods, particularly in food apartheids. As an undergraduate, Aliyah focused her efforts on exploring the structural forms behind environmental issues and the ways in which People of Color interact with land and food. As the climate crisis becomes more of a threat, Aliyah is interested in exploring the politics of food and as an Emerson Fellow, Aliyah hopes to amplify vulnerable voices in marginalized communities to create more sustainable and equitable food systems that can survive the impacts climate change will bring to our lives more drastically.

Gabe Hafemann
29th Class, 2022-2023

A lifelong Upper Midwesterner and proud child of the Driftless region, Gabe has spent the last ten years exploring unique niches in regional policy and food systems. They’ve taken a hands-on approach to service and learning – advancing food cooperatives’ outreach and operations, farming on a UNESCO world heritage site, supporting LGBTQ youth in rural Wisconsin schools, and consulting to sustainable agriculture and hunger relief nonprofits. In 2021, they graduated magna cum laude in Political Science from the University of Minnesota, where they focused their undergraduate thesis on labor organizing in the COVID-19 era. They strive to inform policy and practice such that everyone can be seen, celebrated, and well-fed.

Raneem Karboji
29th Class, 2022-2023

Raised in the borderland of El Paso, Texas, Raneem’s personal experiences and environment influenced her passion for public health and social justice. Observing at an early age her single mother seek affordable medical care and nutrition classes for her sister with Juvenile Diabetes, having family walk across the bridge to Mexico to receive medical treatment, to later noticing the intersectionality of the immigration status barrier and women’s health – she began with civic engagement, community health education, and voter registration to later working for a Texas House Representative that filed legislation to strengthen the Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Task Force. Raneem was awarded the inaugural Rising Star Award by the Texas League of Women Voters – El Paso for her activism and community engagement. She majored in Health Promotion form the University of Texas at El Paso with a Minor in Nutrition, and plans to use her education and skills gained from the Emmerson National Hunger Fellowship to work on anti-poverty initiatives to support low income women and families in her community.

Akeisha Latch
29th Class, 2022-2023

Akeisha Latch is originally from Jamaica, before emigrating to the States in 2004. She recently graduated from Clark University with a B.A. in English and concentration in comparative race and ethnic Studies. As an undergraduate student Akeisha has also pursued further education in Public Administration under an accelerated degree program at Clark University. In the past two years, Akeisha has interned at Waterbury Bridge to Success as a Community Impact and Marketing Intern and at New Britain OIC as a Summer Youth Employment Coordinator, putting what she has learned in the accelerated program into practice.

Landy Lin
29th Class, 2022-2023

Born in New York City and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Landy Lin is a recent Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Centre College—majoring in Behavioral Neuroscience and minoring in Social Justice—who participated in various anti-poverty and hunger initiatives throughout her college career. One being the Bonner Scholarship Program, where she interned for three years and completed 1,463 hours of service. She also participated in the National Shepherd Higher Education Consortium on Poverty Program, where she helped the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers pilot a county-wide program aimed at reducing maternal health disparities due to systemic inequities. She is a co-founder of the Asian American Pacific Islander Coalition at Centre College, the first in the College's 200-year history—one of her proudest achievements.

Molly Pifko
29th Class, 2022-2023

Originally from Lynnfield, Massachusetts, Molly Pifko recently graduated with a B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic. As an undergraduate, she used this interdisciplinary major to combine interests in politics, environmental law and policy, US history, and communication. These interests have led her to spend the last four years working and volunteering for progressive candidates, working as a writing tutor, peer mentor, and legal research assistant at the college, and interning in her local congressional office. Molly’s passion for food justice was fostered at an early age through her temple’s anti-hunger work, and as an Emerson fellow, she is excited to continue learning about how both public policy and community support can be used to take on hunger and the systems of economic, environmental, and political injustice which perpetuate it.

Clara Pitt
29th Class, 2022-2023

Originally from Los Angeles, California, Clara recently graduated from Vassar College with a Bachelor’s of Arts and honors in Environmental Studies. While at Vassar, she spent her time exploring the intersection between visual arts, environmentalism, and behavioral science as means of creating climate action accessibility. In 2021, inspired to move intellectually past her history of disordered eating and dietary restrictions, Clara worked with a team of researchers and local residents to study how to make the New York City food system more affordable, equitable, just, and sustainable. She and a peer wrote a cookbook based on their research titled "A Bite of the Big Apple: A Food Justice Cookbook." As an Emerson Fellow, Clara hopes to work at the intersection of climate and food justice and support making healthy foods accessible while building more sustainable and equitable food systems.

Hayleigh Rockenback
29th Class, 2022-2023

Hayleigh is a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame where she majored in Sociology and minored in both public policy and Italian. During her time at Notre Dame, Hayleigh was a student affiliate at the Klau Center for Civil and Human Rights and a member of the Alpha Kappa Delta Sociology Honors Society. Her interest in sustainability and public policy also led her to write her senior capstone, a policy memo on water conservation in Arizona. Originally from Tucson, Arizona, Hayleigh’s passion for social justice stemmed from her culturally diverse upbringing and lived experience, leading her to a summer of service work in Camden, New Jersey. Her experience working at a nonprofit dedicated to environmental transformation through sustainability in food insecure neighborhoods, as well as her commitment to those suffering from drug and alcohol addiction ultimately became the catalyst for her dedication to breaking the cycle of injustice in the United States. Following the Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellowship, Hayleigh hopes to advocate for those on the margins and create meaningful change throughout the world.

Rajitmeet Singh
29th Class, 2022-2023

Rajitmeet Singh is a Sikh American, first generation college graduate, immigrant, from Los Angeles, California. The past 5 years, Rajitmeet served in multiple nonprofit organizations to make meaningful change working with under-resourced communities with a focus on improving opportunity, achievement, and stability for students. Rajitmeet Singh loves exploring, asking questions about how things work, and drinking coffee while reading books about absolutely everything.

Maryam Taysir
29th Class, 2022-2023

Maryam Taysir graduated from Rhodes College with a major in Business Management and a minor in Jewish, Islamic, & Middle East Studies, but her biggest accomplishment is being the eldest sister of five siblings. Maryam was the community service chair for 901 Ummah, a nonprofit organization that fosters a productive Muslim community that reaches across the city of Memphis to inspire, create, and empower. She manages ‘Feed the City’, a program that aims to eliminate food insecurity in downtown Memphis by providing hot, nutritious, and multicultural meals to those in need. She is the co-founder and president of the campus organization, Students for Justice in Palestine, which stands in solidarity with the Palestinian people’s struggle for self-determination, justice, and equality through educational programming. She was also a mentor for the Multicultural Vision Program (MVP) at Rhodes as well as a Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion intern at Autozone, Inc.

Taylor Unoki
29th Class, 2022-2023

Growing up in Washington all her life, Taylor graduated from the University of Washington in 2021 with a Bachelors Degree in Laws, Society, and Justice. Last summer, she spent four months interning at International Justice Missions, doing research on poverty and human trafficking in the Asia Pacific Region. The internship, volunteering to tutor immigrants, and working at the same soup kitchen, all emphasized her passion for seeing the intersections and dimensions to poverty as a whole. Her hope is to learn how to better address the way housing, education, and systemic inequality exacerbate poverty.

Angela Zhang
29th Class, 2022-2023

Born and raised in California, Angela graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in Mathematics of Computation and a minor in Environmental Systems. Originally pursuing a career in Software Engineering, a course on environmental literature sparked her interest in food justice, health equity, and sustainable food systems. In her senior year, she led an undergraduate research project on barriers to student access of basic needs services during the pandemic. Since graduating, Angela has worked as a research assistant at the USC Keck School of Medicine and the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. In these roles, she has researched the impact of the food environment on nutrition security as well as the viability of aquatic foods in addressing the nutrient gap. In her capacity as a fellow, Angela is interested in working with marginalized populations to address disparities in food access, nutrition security, and chronic health outcomes.