Announcing the 12th Class of Leland International Hunger Fellows

Theo Anastopoulo
12th Class, 2023-2025

Theo is a proud Greek-American from Charleston, South Carolina. He studied global food security at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, where he earned a master's degree in 2023. For two years Theo has served as a research assistant for a USAID project studying famine typologies and trajectories, which forms the basis of his graduate thesis, "Famine that Annihilates." He has also interned with International Crisis Group and The Fund for Peace. Theo is particularly interested in the political economy of hunger, famine trajectories, and anthropological approaches to the study of famine. Before graduate school Theo helped refugee populations learn English in Athens, Greece, volunteered with the Peace Corps in Mozambique, and worked as an AmeriCorps Member in South Carolina. He completed his undergraduate degree in history at Clemson University. Theo's favorite book is The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

Kaila Balch
12th Class, 2023-2025

Kaila Balch is a Park City, Utah, native and recent graduate of Duke University with a Master’s of Science (MSc) in Global Health. Her graduate work focused on the the impact of gold mining, mercury, and infectious disease in the Amazon, taking her to Peru, Ecuador and Guyana for fieldwork. Prior to her MSc, Kaila graduated from the University of Utah with a dual B.A. in Environmental Studies and B.S. in International Studies, focusing on Food Systems and Global Health, respectively. Her undergraduate work sparked her interest in areas of environmental justice, conservation, food security and sustainable agriculture. Throughout her academic career, she worked on her campus farms and food pantries; served in AmeriCorps; developed food security materials with the International Rescue Committee; and focused on women’s health and gender-based violence with the Administration for Children and Families (D.C.) and National Coordinating Coalition (Guyana). Outside of professional work, Kaila is an avid climber, skier, and travel enthusiast. As a part of the 12th Leland Fellowship class she looks forward to further engaging in food security and justice work.

Lora Boll
12th Class, 2023-2025

Lora Boll holds an M.A. in Social Work, Policy, and Administration from the University of Chicago, focusing on child wellbeing, social policy formulation, and trauma-responsive care. She has served as a program administrator, social worker, youth mentor, and volunteer with organizations in the U.S., India, and Honduras, including Family Focus, UChicago College Readiness and Access, Changing Worlds, Healthy Niños Honduras, and Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA). Her work in youth development, education, and early childhood interventions highlighted for her the critical impact of food insecurity on children’s health and development. She comes to the Leland Fellowship convinced that promoting child wellbeing and ensuring equitable outcomes for children experiencing poverty begins with addressing food insecurity. A resident of Pennsylvania, Lora also holds a B.M. in Music and a Certificate in Human Needs and Global Resources (HNGR) from Wheaton College.

Peter Bowman
12th Class, 2023-2025

Peter Bowman graduated from the University of California, Davis in 2023 with a Master of Science in International Agricultural Development and a graduate certificate in Agricultural Extension and Science Communication. His master’s studies focused on how participatory extension can improve health and productivity of smallholder livestock in the Global South, including thesis research analyzing stakeholder perceptions of animal disease and vaccination through a One Health lens in rural Sierra Leone. Prior to graduate school, Peter worked as an agriculture extensionist for two years in a small, rural community in Togo with the Peace Corps. He extended his service to stay a third year in Togo to support improvements to training, needs assessment, and collaboration for Peace Corps Togo Volunteers working in agriculture. Upon returning to America, Peter worked in food insecurity outreach through AmeriCorps VISTA, helping increase the capacity of local organizations to serve food deserts in Fargo, North Dakota. He holds a bachelor’s degree in International Studies from the University of Idaho.

Theresa Fang
12th Class, 2023-2025

Theresa Fang is an experienced global health professional in the field of food security, agricultural development, and international nutrition. Her work has focused on Agricultural Supply Chains, Dietary Diversity, and Resilient Livelihoods across various countries in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa including Bangladesh, Ghana, and Uganda. Theresa earned her Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and a BA in International Development Studies from McGill University. Theresa also holds certificates in Health Finance and Management, Social Studies of Medicine, and Health Geography. Originally from New Jersey, Theresa holds a strong sense of cultural awareness, a deep understanding of and commitment to capacity building, and is passionate about improving global food security and food systems resilience. Her past experience includes work with both international and US-based NGOs and government agencies including Helen Keller International and the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food for Progress and Market Access Programs.

Alaine Johnson
12th Class, 2023-2025

Alaine Johnson graduated with her Master's at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies focusing on Development, Climate, and Sustainability in South and Southeast Asia. As an agrarian scholar, her work focuses on organic agri-food systems, conservation, and regenerative agriculture. Alaine grew up in Seattle and then lived overseas for 12 years in Singapore, India, Indonesia, Eswatini, and Thailand, and worked in carbon accounting, coffee production and research, and before that in a tech startup and as a journalist. She's part of the second graduating class of Yale-NUS College in Singapore, where she majored in environmental science, and before that she was a Shelby Davis Scholar at the United World College of Southern Africa. Fun fact: her pandemic hobby was endurance cycling and she cycled 180km in a day!

Chika Kondo
12th Class, 2023-2025

Chika Kondo is a dedicated practitioner working at the intersection of agrifood systems, gender, and sustainable agriculture. She holds a PhD from Kyoto University in Japan, where her research focused on the impact of alternative food networks on promoting equitable food access and agricultural sustainability. Most recently, Chika served as a gender and inclusion consultant for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In this role, she led a regional study on livestock and gender in East Africa, reviewing national policies and initiatives that address key barriers and opportunities for women livestock keepers. Her work aimed to promote climate change mitigation, leverage digital technology, and improve access to finance for women in the livestock sector. Before her work in international development, Chika established a youth of color farmers' cooperative in New Orleans. Through this initiative, she integrated youth organizing, food sovereignty, and solidarity economics as means to combat food insecurity and empower communities to grow food for themselves. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, Chika received her B.S. and B.A. in Society and Environment and Political Science from UC Berkeley. Her educational background and hands-on experience have driven her commitment to creating sustainable and inclusive food systems.

Erin Mercado
12th Class, 2023-2025

Erin Mercado is a global sustainability researcher interested in working within the intersection of environmental justice and health equity. The start of her interdisciplinary career began during her time as a Healthy Schools Coordinator for Peace Corps Guatemala experiencing the dissonance and failure of health programs that did not integrate social determinants of health like the environment and socio-cultural factors. This inspired Erin to pursue a masters of environmental management at Western Colorado University. As a graduate student she was fortunate to work with SARAR, a water and sanitation (WASH) nonprofit in Mexico, to train communities about the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus and with Creating Interfaces, an international FEW nexus research team, to study food policies in Delaware through the Global Sustainability Scholar program. Erin’s masters project was an exploratory research into menstrual health and hygiene (MHH) in rural Ethiopia in collaboration with iDE, specifically their WASH and Ethiopia teams. She has continued to work with iDE as a consultant to build out their global MHH portfolio. While eager to operate and learn more about the nuances of food and nutrition from the implementation to policy level, Erin is particularly excited to serve new communities and elevate food and nutrition as a channel to connection, care, culture and a link to the land.

Sarah Pechtl
12th Class, 2023-2025

Born and raised in Austria, Sarah holds a BSc in Nutritional Science with a minor in sociology from Pepperdine University. Sarah’s undergraduate studies were shaped by her involvement in projects aimed at improving the dietary quality of marginalized population groups facing food and nutrition insecurity. Motivated to understand and help mitigate the impact of socio-structural factors on malnutrition, she pursued an MMSc in Public Health Sciences from Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, graduating in 2023. Her thesis evaluated a childhood nutrition intervention delivered in disadvantaged areas of Sweden, providing insights for program scale-up and the efficacy of targeting behavioral factors in the presence of structural barriers. Sarah has worked with large, multi-country datasets and complex quantitative methods to investigate mechanisms of health behavior and identify opportunities to intervene. Additionally, she has participated in global health educational experiences in Denmark and Kenya. She is fascinated by the interaction between health promotion and social/environmental justice in the agriculture-nutrition nexus. Driven by the conviction that systemic change, multi-sectoral collaboration, and decolonization are essential for achieving a world with zero hunger, Sarah is excited to join the 12th Class of Leland Fellows and contribute to these transformative efforts.

Melanie Sudetic
12th Class, 2023-2025

Melanie holds a BS in Nutrition & Dietetics from Kent State University and an MSc in Nutrition for Global Health from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She began her career in nutrition as a registered dietitian focusing on food security and community nutrition in low-income areas of Cleveland, Ohio. Soon after, she shifted her focus to global nutrition and served in rural Guatemala with the Peace Corps as a Maternal and Child Health Facilitator. There, she supported the Guatemalan Ministry of Health with the implementation of interventions aimed at preventing maternal and child morbidity and mortality. In 2021, she remotely supported the World Food Programme Cambodia country office by conducting a desk review of nutrition and school feeding programmes as an entry point to prevent acute malnutrition in pre-primary school age children in Cambodia. Most recently, she worked with the World Food Programme in Mozambique to support the development of a digital optimization tool to produce nutritious and affordable recipes from locally available foods. In particular, Melanie supported this project through the collection of food price data from informal markets in three regions of Mozambique using the Cost of Diet methodology. Her primary interest is maternal and child nutrition in humanitarian settings.