Theo was raised in McMinnville, Oregon, a small agricultural town in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, by a community that taught him that everyone deserves to eat with joy and dignity. He has just graduated from the University of Oregon with an honors B.A. in Planning, Public Policy, and Management and successfully defended his thesis, which discussed how municipalities can utilize food systems planning to support community-owned and operated grocery stores, while striving for an ultimate goal of food and economic sovereignty at the community-level. His interests lie in utilizing his research and his own lived experiences with food insecurity to discover how to develop practical solutions to the immediate hunger needs of communities in tandem with work to eliminate the systemic causes of hunger. He is thankful to have served a number of Oregon cities on projects relating to hunger and housing insecurity while completing his undergraduate degree, and looks forward to serving new communities as an Emerson Hunger Fellow.
Field placement: New York City Mayor’s Office of Food Policy
New York, New York
Theo's work at the NYC Mayor's Office of Food Policy primarily centers on furthering public-facing transparency and interagency collaboration on NYC's Good Food Purchasing initiative, which pushes for values-based food procurement by city agencies. His research on how to best achieve transparency and accessibility is being conducted via interviews with city agencies and both current and prospective vendor partners. His goal is to make vendor participation clearer and more accessible on city web platforms, in the hopes of making city contracts more accessible to local farmers and to local food and meal vendors.