Cook headshot

Leland Fellow

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.

Host Organization: ACDI/VOCA

First Year Placement
Phonsavan, Laos

Felipe was based in the Philippines, working primarily on the Cooperative Development Program Philippines at ACDI/VOCA as a cooperative development specialist. Felipe concentrated on improving the cooperative’s business performances by delivering market linkages between the cooperative producers and aggregators. Felipe also worked with the Laos Microenterprise Project to strengthen value chains in Xieng Khouang Province for small and medium-level enterprises. He worked with the Technical Learning and Application team to ensure that project-level learning at the Cooperative Development Program and Laos Microenterprise was extrapolated and used in other ACDI/VOCA projects. His focus was on Private Sector Engagement (PSE), and Felipe helped create PSE briefs for new projects to determine the best approaches. He assisted in other projects by completing desk research and written summaries of past technical approaches.

Second Year Placement
Phonsavan, Laos

In his second year in the Phillippines, Felipe works as a market analyst for the Cooperative Development Program Philippines (CDP Philippines) at ACDI/VOCA. He focuses on youth engagement strategies for the CDP Philippines team. This work culminated with the Palawan Youth Engagement Activity, the Youth LEAD Summit – Leaders & Entrepreneurs in Agro-enterprise Development. Felipe’s work helps lead a membership engagement survey of the 41 cooperatives and writes success narratives to share the story of CDP Philippines with HQ staff. He assists the MEL team by providing technical assistance to the MEL director on ACDI/VOCA’s LEAP Program and training the new MEL Assistant. With help from ACDI/VOCA’s Headquarters Technical Learning and Application team, Felipe wrote a Small Medium Enterprises toolkit synopsis, which ACDI/VOCA will use in future project implementations. Additionally, Felipe customizes a Project Planner Tool for the coffee value chain on the PhilCafe project in Davao.

Blog Posts

Boosting Cooperatives to Support Farmers in the Philippines

Blog Post / December 23, 2022