Announcing 11th Class of Leland International Fellows

Alyx Ruzevich
11th Class, 2021-2023

Alyx Ruzevich is currently a Master of Public Administration student at New York University, where she served as Co-Chair of the Wagner Food Policy Alliance. She also holds a B.A. in French with a minor in International Development. Prior to graduate school, she spent two years as a Sustainable Agriculture Extension Agent with the Peace Corps, working closely with small-scale farmers, women’s collectives, and youth groups to promote food security and environmental stewardship in rural Senegal. Alyx has also worked as a youth leader in experiential learning programs with a strong focus in urban food systems, environmental conservation, and cross-cultural exchange. Her work is driven by the conviction that some of the world's most important challenges can be solved through the lens of food and agriculture.

Bailey Adams
11th Class, 2021-2023

Bailey holds a Masters in Global Human Development from Georgetown University with specializations in nutrition, food security, and humanitarian emergencies. During her tenure at Georgetown, Bailey worked with the Office of Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition at USAID and served as a consultant and research analyst alongside the team leading the World Bank’s COVID-19 food security response. Additionally, as part of her graduate Capstone project, she consulted with Project Concern International and Global Communities to identify and recommend opportunities to mainstream climate action into the organization's projects and operations. Prior to grad school, Bailey served as a Global Health Corps Fellow with Jhpiego in Uganda. There, she led the New Program Development team, where she wrote winning grants from leading international institutions such as UNICEF and spearheaded the technical program design of new maternal and child health projects. She also spent two years in Rwanda promoting agricultural interventions to childhood malnutrition with Gardens for Health International. Bailey also holds a BA in International Studies and a Minor in Public Health from American University and is originally from Colorado.

Breanna Gomillion
11th Class, 2021-2023

Breanna Gomillion holds a Master of Public Policy from Michigan State University. Her master’s capstone applied a systems approach to expand and integrate workforce development programs with social service systems to address the variety of causes and consequences of chronic disengagement from school and work like access to safe and stable housing, food and nutrition, and health services. Before attending graduate school, Breanna worked at buildOn, a service-based nonprofit, supporting the Global School Construction Program where she worked in partnership with program staff and local residents in Senegal, Haiti, Guatemala, and Malawi to build schools, enroll out of school children, and educate adult learners. Breanna is passionate about reforming infrastructures and institutions and using public policy as a tool to eliminate systems of structural inequality on a global scale.

Casey Tokeshi
11th Class, 2021-2023

Casey is from Los Angeles, California. She graduated from the University of Washington in June 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in both Medical Anthropology and Global Health, and Political Science, and from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in May 2021 with a Master of Health Science in Environmental Health with certificates in Food Systems, Public Health, and the Environment; and Climate Change and Public Health. Between undergraduate and graduate school, Casey was a Peace Corps volunteer working as an English Teacher and Teacher Trainer in Bangil, Jawa Timur, Indonesia. As a graduate student, Casey worked as a research assistant under Dr. Anita Shankar working on research surrounding personal agency in international development and assisted in projects involving the effects of clean cookstoves and empowerment training interventions on gender based violence. Her master's thesis explored the socio-ecological health impacts of U.S. militarism and imperialism in Korea. Casey's primary interests are in sustainability and justice.

Doug Nagie
11th Class, 2021-2023

Doug holds a dual BA in History and in International Studies from the University of Utah. He studied international development in Dakar, Senegal, and with RECODEF, a Senegalese NGO which promotes economic development, sustainable agriculture, and women's equality in the rural community of Fissel. He has experience working in communities around Salt Lake City, including co-founding the University of Utah Prison Education Project, which provides sustained, quality higher education to individuals incarcerated in Utah prisons; volunteering with the International Rescue Committee's New Roots community farming program; and working on the ground floor of a kitchen for people experiencing homelessness. Doug is motivated to learn about environmentally and economically sustainable agricultural practices in the Global South, particularly relating to water use and conservation in the face of climate change.

Farah Ahmad
11th Class, 2021-2023

Farah Ahmad graduated from The Friedman School at Tufts University and Tufts University School of Medicine in 2020 with an MS/ MPH in Public Health Nutrition. For her Master’s of Science Internship, Farah joined the USDA's Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) as a Tisch International Nutrition Fellow. While at the USDA Farah, collaborated with McGovern-Dole analysts and the FAS nutrition team to review Local and Regional Food Aid Procurement Program (LRP) proposals. Prior to attending graduate school, Farah worked at Rise Against Hunger New England as a Community Engagement Coordinator. At Rise Against Hunger Farah trained and coached volunteers to package over 250,000 meals for international and emergency hunger relief. Prior to becoming a Leland Fellow, Farah volunteered as an AmeriCorps VISTA and worked with domestic non-profits that prioritize nutrition quality over caloric intake and Food is Medicine initiatives. Farah holds a BS in Environmental Science from the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Felipe Cook
11th Class, 2021-2023

Felipe Cook was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, at 30 below. He later graduated from the University of New Mexico with a BA in Political Science and included a year of international policy studies at the University of Leeds, U.K. Felipe worked in education in the Teach For America Phoenix Cohort teaching science and mathematics to students and as an agricultural extension agent in Senegal with the Peace Corps. Upon returning stateside, he worked as a forestry technician in Mammoth Lakes, California, with the US Forest Service. Most recently, he worked as a programmer and data analyst for avionic and unemployment services in New Mexico. Felipe’s primary interests are at the intersection of poverty reduction, climate change, and food security.

Lexi Kirton
11th Class, 2021-2023

After working in international trade and public procurement for several years, Alexandra Kirton made a career transition to focus on food systems and emergency management. She began this transition at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service where she earned her Master of Public Administration with a focus on international development policy and management. During her Master’s Capstone project, she led a team of students who wrote a report on the impacts of decentralized forms of government on coastal resilience efforts in the Philippines and Bangladesh. Upon commencement she received the Hammad Fund International Leadership Award for her contribution to the global experience, academic success, and exceptional capacity for international leadership.

Prior to becoming a Leland Fellow, Alexandra worked at several New York City government agencies where she worked closely with city officials on policy design and implementation. Most recently, Alexandra was a John D. Solomon Fellow at New York City Emergency Management where she served as a liaison for elected officials, city and state agencies, and community stakeholders during the COVID-19 pandemic and other emergencies.

Alexandra is a Colorado native who enjoys cooking and learning languages in her spare time.

Liz Margolis
11th Class, 2021-2023

Elizabeth is an experienced policy and data analyst in the field of food and gender, with strong communications skills and a passion for humanitarian response and social development. Her research has focused on Food Systems, Security, Sovereignty, and Anthropologies, Social Development and Protection, Sexuality and Gender, Latin America and Guatemala, and more. She earned her MA in Social Development with Distinction from the University of Sussex (Ranked #1 in the World for Development Studies), and her BA in Public Policy and Ethics magna cum laude from the Templeton Honors College at Eastern University. She is originally from Connecticut and is fluent in French and Spanish. Liz has several years of work experience in research, policy and data analysis with the UN World Food Programme and several US-based NGOs.

Maria Omulubi
11th Class, 2021-2023

Maria is a practitioner of agricultural development in East Africa, where she has supported organizations to scale service and training delivery to smallholder farmers. Her work focuses on the intersection of people and food security. Prior to becoming a fellow, Maria held senior roles at One Acre Fund, a social impact organization that serves 500,000 farmers across Kenya. There, she managed an agricultural extension team of 1500, designed program operations, and led organizational initiatives to improve employee engagement, equity, and well-being. Earlier in her career, Maria coordinated urban farmer training at Mazingira Institute, with a particular focus on youth farmers. She also contributed to research on urban food security and housing access. She lives with her family in Kenya and holds a BA in International Development from American University.

Mary Kate Cartmill
11th Class, 2021-2023

Mary Kate holds an MPH from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis with a concentration in Global Health. Her thesis, completed in partnership with USAID’s Feed the Future Fish Innovation Lab, utilized qualitative methods to understand the barriers to fish consumption during the complementary feeding period in coastal Kenya. As a graduate researcher her work focused on transdisciplinary approaches to improving maternal and child nutrition and using community-based system dynamics to improve inclusive education in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Mary Kate also spent a summer working and learning alongside female farmers in Kamuli, Uganda to help strengthen the monitoring and evaluation framework of a sustainable agriculture program. Most recently, she contributed to two discussion papers for UN Nutrition outlining the role of aquatic and livestock-derived foods in sustainable healthy diets. Mary Kate’s primary interests lie at the intersection of food systems, nutrition and environmental sustainability. Originally from Kalamazoo, Michigan, she received her B.S. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from the University of Michigan.

Natalie Petrulla
11th Class, 2021-2023

Prior to becoming a Leland Fellow, Natalie worked as a Gender Integration Associate with EnCompass on the USAID Feed the Future Advancing Women’s Empowerment program, providing technical assistance for gender integration in agriculture and market systems programs. She conducted qualitative research and developed practical tools focused on increasing women’s decision-making power in production and beyond production activities and addressing issues of gender-based violence in agriculture. Natalie also served as a Food Security Extension Agent in Peace Corps Benin, where she and her local counterparts designed and implemented programs at the intersection of gender and food security in the community. Together, they supported 50 Village Savings and Loans Associations, worked with women’s groups to develop agriculturally based income generating activities, and designed programs to educate youth on nutrition-sensitive agriculture. Originally from New Jersey, Natalie holds a BA in Public Policy and Environmental Science from New York University.

Natalie Volin
11th Class, 2021-2023

Natalie holds an MS in Agriculture, Food, and the Environment from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. At Tufts, Natalie worked on the Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA) project to build a database of global food price data for the purpose of better understanding the availability, quality, and adequacy of food price data and to examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on global retail food prices. She also worked for the USAID/FFP Food Aid Quality Review (FAQR) and managed the Research Engagement on Food Interventions for Nutritional Effectiveness (REFINE) project. An environmentalist at heart, Natalie received her undergraduate degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado and worked in Guinea as an agroforestry extension volunteer with the U.S. Peace Corps.

Onyịnye Alheri
11th Class, 2021-2023

Onyịnye Alheri is an artist, doula and scholar-activist who is active in movements that address food & land justice, police & prison abolition, and maternal/infant health. Ọ recently served as Co-Principal Investigator on a qualitative research project exploring the mental health and psychosocial needs of climate activists in Baltimore and is currently co-authoring a toolkit appendix to address the complex needs of pregnant people who live with substance use disorder. She is looking forward to deepening her understanding of the food & nutritional needs of people in crisis. Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Onyịnye has lived in many places including Washington, D.C., Maryland, Oregon, Minnesota, California, Ecuador and México. Ọ earned a bachelor’s of arts (BA) in International Studies & Philosophy from Macalester College and a master’s in social work (MSW) from the University of Maryland, Baltimore.