Introducing the OpenTEAM Fellows! To better meet ground-level needs of producers and refine tech tools using a human-centered design approach, OpenTEAM launched a year-long Fellows Program this summer. Fellows are embedded into the local farming and ranching community they serve, working as trained community and technical facilitators alongside local Hub staff as they accomplish their goals and work to implement OpenTEAM tech tools that can provide land stewards with the knowledge needed to enable regenerative agricultural management practices.
Sara Legg (she/her/hers)
General Mills, Kansas and the southern plains
With a background in visual anthropology, Sara has worked as a design researcher and systems thinker in many sectors in diverse locations for the last 7 years. Her expertise includes working at the intersection of design and land-based work, to help create a resilient food system and thriving places. She is committed to more than human-centered design, broadening the scope of her work to include life-centered design. She is also committed to a research approach that is collaborative and participatory, using these approaches to help create an accessible and effective environment for those working in regenerative agriculture. She’s excited to work with OpenTEAM and General Mills because of their commitment to producer-first development, and the opportunity to build both technology platforms and meaningful relationships that will make scaling regenerative agriculture not only possible, but common.
Jeanne Lurvey (she/her/hers)
Pasa Sustainable Agriculture
Jeanne was raised in Massachusetts and has lived in Boulder, CO and Brooklyn, NY and will now be calling Harrisburg, PA home. Previously, she worked as an art director, a visual storyteller working alongside chefs on cooking shows, cookbooks, and branded content. With a passion for sustainable agriculture because it creates a path to build thriving ecosystems, nutrient rich food, and positively influence the lives of many, she joins OpenTEAM after finishing her Master’s degree in Sustainability & Environmental Management. Shifting careers to work on the other end of the food value chain to advance both human & environmental health, creating change from the ground up, her graduate program culminated in a consulting project with a top natural foods company creating soil health initiatives that apply regenerative ag principles throughout the value chain for systems change. The project highlighted the need for soil health field research paired with data to better support farmers and inform policy change. Bringing her expertise in relationship building, project management, and food systems, she will work alongside farmers to advance soil health, build community, and connect equitable & necessary tools to producers, the land stewards on the front lines of climate change providing all of us one of life’s essential needs, healthy food.
Jeff Borum (he/him/his)
California Association of Resource Conservation Districts and California Farm Demonstration Network
Genna Fudin (she/her/hers)
Point Blue Conservation Science and Quivira Coalition
As a Jewish American who grew up in Connecticut by way of her great grandparents immigrating from Eastern Europe in the early 1900s, Genna recognizes her positionality and seeks to honor her ancestors in the food systems work she does. Growing up five minutes away from a multigenerational farm, frolicking amongst strawberry fields in the summer and pumpkin picking in the fall was a beloved pastime for her family. Her love for connecting with the land is also her way of connecting to the generations that came before her, and the collective stewardship she hopes to be a part of in the present, as she strives to leave a hopeful and climate-smart legacy for the future. For the past 8 years, she has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and recently graduated from UC-Berkeley with a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Sciences with a minor in Food Systems. Based on her previous experiences in food systems work, her studies, and cultural background, she brings a unique and interdisciplinary perspective to the OpenTEAM fellowship to support two complimentary carbon monitoring projects of rangelands, Point Blue’s Range-C Monitoring Framework and Quivira Coaltion’s Carbon Ranch Initiative’s work of carbon monitoring on working rangelands.
Steph Wiley (He/Him/His)
Black Farmer Fund and Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust
