OAKLAND INSTITUTE - Key Persons
Abner Hauge is the illustrator of My Home, My Land. He is pursuing a BA in International Studies and a BFA in Fine Arts at CSU East Bay and looking forward to a career in international relations journalism and to combine such work with comic books. He has storyboarded for a film, drafted a textbook proposal, and drawn countless pages of comics in his life as an illustrator.
Abner's academic interests are in international relations, media studies and the advancement of the medium of comics. His work as an Intern Scholar at the Oakland Institute is at the intersection of all three of those fields: developing ways to discuss the truth behind corporate-led development and land-grab crises through the symbiosis of words and pictures.
Agazit received her BA in International Development Studies and MA in African Studies from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Her academic interests included African cinema, cultural production, and narratives of resistance. She currently works at UCLA's Center for World Languages in the International Institute and is a research associate for an urban agriculture non-profit in Los Angeles.
Her areas of interest include food sovereignty, farmers' rights, land rights and land grab, climate change, sustainable development and social justice.
Andy is a Policy Analyst supporting the Institute's work on land rights, food sovereignty and international development.
He holds a Master's Degree in Public Policy from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs with a concentration in Global Environment and Resources. Andy's past research experience centers on evaluating strategies for developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change with a focus on agroecology and sustainable seed systems.
Before his Master's, Andy spent multiple summers working in Malawi on a variety of youth, health, and agriculture projects in addition to working at the USAID Bureau of Food Security Service Center and interning at Landesa. He graduated with honors from Colby College in 2016, double majoring in Government and Environmental Policy.
Anna Blackshaw (she/her) is a political organizer, policy advocate, documentarian and white anti-racist educator who has worked at the intersections of legislative advocacy, community organizing, and grassroots change for over thirty years. Her work focuses on dismantling militarism and white supremacy within both U.S. domestic and foreign policy, while building political power to replace systems of extraction, exploitation, and carcerality with those rooted in equity, justice and community care.
Anna is a co-founder of Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ) Bay Area and serves on the board of Just Foreign Policy. She works with a Palestinian-led organization that brings internationals to the West Bank to document and deter settler violence. Anna's writing and photography have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, ColorLines, Common Dreams and The Sun, and is a co-author of No More Strangers Now: Young Voices from a New South Africa.
Anna Peare is a recent graduate of UC Davis where she studied Community and Regional Development and Spanish. Her senior honors thesis examined the issue of Central American unaccompanied child migration to the United States, specifically focusing on mental health implications on children. She intends to continue her academic career in graduate school and to receive a Masters in Public Health.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director
- Founder
- Member of the Board
Anuradha Mittal, founder and executive director of the Oakland Institute, is an internationally renowned expert on issues of human rights, agriculture, development, and conservation policies.
Under Anuradha's leadership, the Oakland Institute has unveiled land investment deals in the developing world to expose a disturbing pattern of a lack of transparency, fairness, and accountability. The dynamic relationship between research, advocacy, and international media coverage has resulted in an amazing string of successes and organizing in the US and abroad.
Anuradha has authored and edited numerous books and reports. Her articles and opinion pieces have been published in widely circulated newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Bangkok Post, among others; and she is frequently interviewed on CNN, BBC World, CBC, ABC, Al Jazeera, and the National Public Radio.
Anuradha often testifies before the US Congress, the United Nations, and has given several hundred keynote addresses including invitational events from governments and universities.
Recipient of several awards including the 2024 Seeds of Strength award (CAIR SFBA); 2022 Feyerabend Award, 2022 All in for Justice Award (IMEU), Endow the Future from Responsible Endowments Coalition, and KPFA Peace Prize, Anuradha was named the Most Valuable Thinker by the Nation magazine. Anuradha serves on the Board of Environmental Defender Law Center, Blue Planet Project, and is a Senior Fellow at the Alternative Policy Solutions at the American University, Cairo.
Arjun Amin is currently a junior at The College Preparatory School in Oakland, California. Arjun is pursuing his interest in the confluence between neocolonialism and the fight against climate change through his internship at the Oakland Institute. As an Intern Scholar, Arjun has been learning and growing his skills through researching carbon credit schemes and their impacts on communities in East Africa. Arjun is an avid policy debater for his school and enjoys participating in theatre and cooking in his free time.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Co - Founder
- Member of the Board
Atul Sharan is the co-founder and the Chief Executive Officer of CellMax Life, which applies semiconductor industry principles to a proprietary Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) bio-mimetic CMx platform to develop affordable, clinically proven blood-tests for Early Cancer Detection and Treatment. He was motivated to start CellMax as two members of his family have been diagnosed with cancer - one of them was diagnosed with breast cancer within two weeks of receiving a conclusively negative mammogram.
Atul is a veteran of the high-tech industry with experience as an engineer, serial entrepreneur, CEO and angel investor. He specializes in identifying unmet market needs and matching them with early-stage technologies to achieve dramatically better results than prevailing standards. He has done that successfully multiple times: AutoESL (acquired by Xilinx); ClearShape Technologies (acquired by Cadence), Numerical Technologies (Nasdaq IPO; acquired by Synopsys); Ambit Design (acquired by Cadence). Atul holds a BS in Engineering from IIT-India; MS in Engineering from UH, Texas and an MBA from UC-Berkeley.
Bella Di Francesco is a recent graduate of the University of California Davis, where she studied International Relations. After her internship focused on the struggles Mesoamerican peasant farmers face in defending their sacred maize and protecting their cultural and economic livelihoods, she is working to better understand the unjust power dynamics between states, corporations, and people. As an Intern Scholar, she is interested in the Oakland Institute's long-standing work on land rights, eager to learn and grow her own skillset to advocate for such important causes. In her free time, Bella enjoys reading, cooking, gardening, and exploring life's wonders with family and friends.
Ben is a senior at Pomona College, majoring in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE), with a minor in Russian and East European Studies. He is especially interested in the economics of international development, and its intersections with human rights and environmental concerns.
In addition to being an Intern Scholar at the Oakland Institute, Ben is an opinions writer for his campus newspaper The Student Life and the policy coordinator of his local chapter of the Sunrise Movement for climate justice. He previously volunteered with a Claremont nonprofit working to make solar energy accessible and affordable for low-income households in California.
Borghild is currently studying for a master of science degree in Globalization, Global Politics, and Culture at the Norwegian University of Technology and Science. Her academic interests include global food systems, understanding large scale land investments, food aid and development assistance policies, industrial versus organic farming practices and land rights issues.
Borghild is passionate about climate change and sustainability, and through her involvement with the non-governmental organization Future in Our Hands, she works towards changing the notion that individuals are powerless in today's globalized world. She is driven by the belief that the choices we make every day matter, and together we are able to build a better, more sustainable world for all.
Job Titles:
- President of a Spring of Hope
Brittany is a 2013 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania where she studied Africa, English literature, and anthropology. Her thesis on customary land grabs in South Africa won the Nnamdi Azikiwe Prize at Penn. Her research interests include rural social transformations, global neoliberal politics, structures of inequality, and land grabs in African countries. She plans to pursue her PhD in anthropology.
Since 2007, Brittany has been the president of A Spring of Hope, an NGO that partners with rural South African schools to provide clean drinking water and economic development projects. Before the Oakland Institute, she interned at the Bureau of African Affairs in the US Department of State and at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy. In spring 2013, she was a guest faculty member at the Drexel University School of Public Health, lecturing online on the global water crisis and its impact on education.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Director of St. Mary 's Center
Carol Johnson has been the director of St. Mary's Center in downtown Oakland since 1999. Since becoming Director at St. Mary's Center, the organization has grown to serve more clients and provide comprehensive service delivery, which includes leadership for affordable housing, food security, and affordable health care. Guided by principles of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights, the center's and Ms. Johnson's leadership has been recognized by the community. St. Mary's Center has been honored with the UNA-East Bay Global Citizen Award and a Local Hero Award from Housing Rights Inc. St. Mary's Center advocates have also been honored by the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, the Alameda County Mental Health Association, and others.
Caroline completed nearly 10 years of business-to-business research in the US and France. She is now pursuing her interests in social and environmental justice. She is currently completing a Master's in Cultural and Social Anthropology at CIIS in San Francisco. Her academic work focuses on environmental injustice and biodiversity loss, especially in the context of land grabs from traditional/ indigenous farmers. She has spent time in the field, building alliances and conducting research in both the West Bank and Ecuador.
Areas of interest: globalization, land rights and displacement, small-scale agriculture, indigenous rights, climate change, and biodiversity.
David Bacon, a Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute, is a writer and photojournalist based in Oakland and Berkeley, California. He is an associate editor at Pacific News Service, and writes for TruthOut, The Nation, The American Prospect, The Progressive, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications. He has been a reporter and documentary photographer for 18 years, shooting for many national publications. He has exhibited his work nationally, and in Mexico, the UK and Germany.
Bacon covers issues of labor, immigration and international politics. He travels frequently to Mexico, the Philippines, Europe and Iraq. He hosts a half-hour weekly radio show on labor, immigration and the global economy on KPFA-FM, and is a frequent guest on KQED-TV's This Week in Northern California.
For twenty years, Bacon was a labor organizer for unions in which immigrant workers made up a large percentage of the membership. Those include the United Farm Workers, the United Electrical Workers, the International Ladies' Garment Workers, the Molders Union and others. Those experiences gave him a unique insight into changing conditions in the workforce, the impact of the global economy and migration, and how these factors influence the struggle for workers rights.
Bacon was chair of the board of the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, and helped organize the Labor Immigrant Organizers Network and the Santa Clara Center for Occupational Safety and Health. He served on the board of the Media Alliance and belongs to the Northern California Media Workers Guild.
David Solnit is a climate justice, global justice, anti-war, arts, and direct action organizer, an author, a puppeteer, and a trainer. He was a key organizer in the shutdowns of the WTO in Seattle in 1999 and in San Francisco the day after Iraq was invaded in 2003.
He is an arts organizer, puppeteer and a co-founder of Art and Revolution, using culture, art, giant puppets and theater in mass mobilizations, for popular education and as an organizing tool. He has co-created visuals for the campaigns of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, National Peoples Action and numerous mobilizations and actions. David is a direct action, strategy and cultural resistance trainer who currently works with Courage to Resist, supporting GI resistance to war and empire.
Solnit edited Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World. With Army veteran Aimee Allison he co-wrote Army of None; How to Counter Military Recruitment, End War, and Build a Better World. He co-wrote and co-edited with Rebecca Solnit (introduction by Anuradha Mittal) The Battle of the Story of the Battle of Seattle (AK Press 2009).
Doug Crissman, Technology Director at the Oakland Institute, is responsible for development and implementation of digital media. Holding a BFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Doug brings over 15 years of design experience in leveraging the web and other technologies to amplify the Oakland Institute's work. In his free time, Doug enjoys time with his wife gardening and tending to their small flock of chickens.
Dylan is a recent graduate of Smith College with a dual degree in Sociology and the Study of Women and Gender, with a concentration in sustainable food and globalization.
While in school, she worked as an environmental justice organizer at Nuestras Raices in Massachusetts. Recently, she worked at Observatorio Migrantes del Caribe in the Dominican Republic, where she carried out research on Haitian to Dominican migration, citizenship, and human rights.
Her academic interests include migration, globalization, labor, and access to food and land in Latin America. She plans to pursue her PhD in Sociology.
A recent transplant to the Bay Area, Dylan is looking forward to gardening on the West Coast.
Elizabeth is currently finishing her Master's of Arts in Global Governance at the University of Waterloo's Balsillie School of International Affairs. Her focus has been on understanding national and international responses to famine. She is interesting in understanding the impact of international food aid and humanitarian interventions in crisis regions, and is examining whether tools such as commodity exchange markets and derivative contracts help or hinder agricultural development in East Africa.
Before her Master's, Elizabeth was the Partnership Manager at Community Food Centres Canada (Toronto) where she worked with communities across Canada to build alternatives to food banks, ensuring people in of all incomes have access to safe, healthy and affordable food. She has also worked as a consultant and program intern with The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation. This included conducting a cross-country scan of community food security initiatives in Canada, which directly led to the creation of a multi-year granting program on sustainable food systems. Her previous work experience has led to a deep passion about food policies that focus on increasing access to food in low-income regions municipally, nationally and internationally.
Elizabeth is an avid cyclist, cook, and gardener, and can be found cycling in the Berkeley Hills each weekend.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Director of the Global Justice Program at the Haas Institute
Elsadig Elsheikh is the director of the global justice program at the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California-Berkeley, where he oversees the program's projects on global food system, global equity, and human rights. His research focuses on the socio-political dynamics of neoliberal globalization as related to state & development, food systems, citizenship, and structural racialization. Elsadig published widely on food system, forced migration, inclusion, international trade, Islamophobia, structural racism, state and citizenship, among other topics.
Prior to Haas Institute, Elsadig led the global justice program at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University, where he also served as an associate editor of the Institute's journal Race/Ethnicity: Multidisciplinary in Global Contexts. Earlier, Elsadig was a researcher with the European Economic Community, Amnesty International, Witness for Peace, and various international grassroots and advocacy organizations.
Eric Heilmann is a recent graduate from UC Berkeley, where he received a BA in Political Science. Eric previously conducted research on the US Food for Peace program and its role in creating dependency on the US in middle- and low-income countries. As an Intern Scholar at the Oakland Institute, Eric is excited to learn more about how neocolonialism participates to global poverty and global inequality. In his free time, Eric likes to read, watch football (the American kind), go to the gym, hang out at cafes, and explore new places.
Faris is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management with a concentration in global environmental politics.
Faris studied global environmental issues to understand the relationship between affluence in some countries and crippling poverty in others. His interests include grassroots organization in developing countries, alternative energy solutions, and environmental justice. Faris came to the Oakland Institute to help build the understanding of the global issues of development through a collective effort. In addition to highlighting the problems of development, Faris is particularly interested in how affected communities respond to and present alternatives to development.
To better understand how he can make a difference, Faris hopes to enter law school and become an advocate for disadvantaged communities in the U.S. and across the globe.
Frédéric Mousseau is the Policy Director at the Oakland Institute, where he coordinates the Institute's research and advocacy activities on land rights, food, agriculture, and international institutions. With over thirty years of experience, he has authored numerous reports, reviews, and articles on these issues. Trained as an economist, Frederic has worked as a staff member and consultant for international relief agencies for nearly two decades, including Action Against Hunger, Doctors Without Borders, and Oxfam International.
In addition to providing leadership to relief efforts in a number of crises around the world, he has designed and supervised food security programs in over 30 countries. He has also conducted numerous reviews and studies on food security policies, programs and institutions; and authored several reports and articles on these issues.
In recent years, Frédéric has focused on research, advocacy and policy work on food security as it relates to the role of international institutions, investment in agriculture and arable land, food price volatility, and food crises.
Grace Phillips is a Morehead Cain Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is pursuing an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and Environmental Geography with focus on theories of value, knowledge, existence, as well as spatial distribution patterns of biota. She hopes to unite these disciplines in her interest in conceptions of land use and ownership and it's translation into resource management policy.
Grace has spent time working with indigenous and impoverished populations in Guatemala, Madagascar, Mongolia and North Carolina. These experiences inform her interests in globalization, autonomy, food sovereignty, climate change, sustainable food systems, and international trade.
Graham is a graduate student at UC Davis, where he is completing dual Masters degrees in International Agricultural Development and Agricultural and Resource Economics. Prior to his graduate studies, Graham worked in Uganda with a fair trade cocoa and vanilla company, and spent the summer of 2012 facilitating needs assessments among the company's smallholder producers in eastern DR Congo. He currently works on the UC Davis Student Farm and is collaborating with a Ugandan research institute on a participatory plant-breeding project through USAID's Horticulture CRSP program.
His interests lie at the confluence of smallholder production and international agricultural trade, and include the role of agroforestry, agroecology, and producer certification schemes in agricultural production systems.
Haley is a rising senior at Emory University majoring in both Anthropology and Psychology.
At Emory she is involved with the International Community School tutoring refugee students and spent the fall of 2013 in Vienna, Austria teaching English to immigrant students from Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Haley's academic interests include food sovereignty and understanding the causes of and policies related to food insecurity, as well as education and education policy in both the United States and developing countries. She has taken several classes concentrating on development studies in Africa and plans on focusing on international development after she graduates from Emory.
Halsey Smith is pursuing a joint major in Geography and Gender, Sexuality, & Feminist Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont. She studies the intersection between place and the people who occupy it. She is also interested in Philosophy and Environmental Studies.
Halsey has social media and communications experience, working with environmental organizations on the campus as well as social justice, specifically migrant farmworker justice organizations. Working as a Social Media Intern Scholar with the Oakland Institute, she is looking forward to promoting and contributing to the advocacy work of the Institute while learning more about Indigenous land rights and the intrinsic link with sustainable agriculture.
Hana Bracale is an undergraduate at College of the Atlantic (COA) where she majors in Human Ecology and studies a range of issues at the intersection of economy, society, and environment, with a particular focus on Food Systems and Climate Change.
Hana is actively engaged in campaigning for progressive issues, policies and candidates, working within her academic institutions and municipal government to implement sustainable practices locally, as a communications staffer on progressive state and federal election campaigns, and as an organizer and activist for climate justice at the grassroots and within international policy spheres. As an Intern Scholar at the Oakland Institute, Hana is particularly interested in considering the relative impact different methodological approaches, such as research-based advocacy or innovative business initiatives, might have in manifesting a more just and sustainable food system.
Team members have the option to give their pronouns on profiles and in our email signatures. We make it optional so that everyone is able to do it on their own terms and in their own way.
Heather Harris is the Oakland Institute's bookkeeper.
Helene is currently studying a M.Sc. in Sustainable Development at the KU Leuven in Europe. Specializing in the intersection between geography, ecology, and society, her studies focus on environmental justice issues and land contestations. Helene"s own research is about land grabbing in capital-intensive regions in Europe and how these processes can be distinguished from land injustices occurring in the Global South.
In her spare time, Helene is part of an urban gardening group as well as a food saving network that collaborates with various stores in Leuven to collect and distribute otherwise wasted food. She feels most at ease in the midst of a joyful, vibrant street protest, but also enjoys relaxing jam sessions in the park with her friends.
Isabella is a current senior at UC Berkeley, where she majors in Rhetoric and Legal Studies. At the Oakland Institute, she is interested in studying how modern land acquisitions might constitute a uniquely neoliberal form of what has been known for centuries as conquest. Outside of the office, Isabella researches welfare policy, teaches a student-led course on California homelessness, and edits a political campus publication. She loves backpacking, insects, and Kurt Vonnegut.
Jeff Furman served as Ben & Jerry's in house legal counsel, fostered many of the company's social initiatives, and has served on the company's corporate board for more than 30 years. Mr. Furman is currently the Chair of the Ben & Jerry's corporate board and a trustee of the Ben & Jerry's Foundation. He is also on the steering committee of the Funders Network on Transforming the Global Economy. Mr. Furman resides in Ithaca, New York with his family. Locally, he is the president of Social Ventures, a 501(c)3 organization as well as the founder of a community dispute resolution center and a community micro-finance program. He has also served on the local school board, working to eliminate socio-economic status as a predictor of student success, and is an advisor to the Dorothy Cotton Institute.
Jessie is currently pursuing a BA in Environment and Development with minors in International Development and Social Entrepreneurship at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. She has written for Catalyst - McGill's International Development Studies online platform for news, features, and opinions in international development.
Jessie's academic interests include agroecology, food sovereignty, environmental justice, alternative energy, and urban planning. She is passionate about understanding the structural causes of inequality around the world and the ways in which systems, institutions, and globalization perpetuate asymmetric power structures. At the Oakland Institute, Jessie will explore the role of multinational corporations in land grabs that undermine indigenous land rights, local livelihoods, and ecological resiliency.
Jettie recently graduated from the London School of Economics and Sciences Po, Paris, where she received a Masters of Public Administration in Sustainable and International Development. Her academic research focused on land-use policy and took her to Mexico City, where she studied the complexities of agriculture and ecological conservation in a sprawling urban setting. Jettie has also studied domestic agricultural issues, and produced extensive research on the U.S. Farm Bill.
Jettie is interested in global and local trends in agriculture and conservation, and how the complexities of globalization interact with local initiatives.
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- Senior Fellow With the
Joan Baxter is a Senior Fellow with the Oakland Institute. An investigative journalist, anthropologist, and award-winning author, she has lived and worked in Africa for more than 25 years - in Niger, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Mali and Sierra Leone.
In 2010 and 2011, under the direction of the Oakland Institute program staff, Ms. Baxter researched and wrote the OI's country reports on large land deals in Mali and Sierra Leone, and contributed features on the issue of large-scale foreign investment in African land to Le Monde Diplomatique, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, BBC Focus on Africa Magazine, and Pambazuka News. For many years, she reported from various African countries for the BBC World Service, Associated Press, and many other international media outlets.
For four years, Ms. Baxter was Senior Science Writer at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), and traveled extensively on smallholder farms throughout Africa and as far away as Indonesia, writing about agricultural development and research. Since that time, she has undertaken research on mining issues in Sierra Leone for Partnership Africa Canada and the Diamond Development Initiative, written about and edited reports on the work of Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Africa, and worked as a development consultant for German International Cooperation, or GIZ. She has also served as Executive Director of the international non-governmental organization, Nova Scotia - Gambia Association and its Nova Scotia - Sierra Leone Programme. She is a Board member of USC-Canada and its global Seeds of Survival Program.
Her latest book, Dust from our eyes - an Unblinkered Look at Africa, was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in the United States. She is the author of four books on Africa, including A Serious Pair of Shoes - an African Journal (2000), which won the Evelyn Richardson Award for non-fiction at the 2001 Atlantic Writing Awards.
Josephin Robinette is currently pursuing an MA in Global Studies organized jointly by the University of Freiburg, the University of Cape Town and Chulalongkorn University with a focus on political science and sociology. She has written on human rights in regard to migration and discrimination of LGBTQI, the international refugee regime, changes of the World Bank development discourse from the 1980s until the 2000s and land rights in Madagascar.
Josephin is interested in the links between international institutions, actions of governments, and policy formation and implementation. She sees policy making structures as the starting points in order to change social and economic inequalities, security issues and environmental degradation. Therefore, providing incontestable information to base future actions and policies on, is what Josephin is looking forward to during her time at the Oakland Institute.
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor
- Researcher
- Fellow / Consultant - Advocacy
Josh Mayer is a researcher who uses community-collaborative, ethnographic methods to study the relationships between settler colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, and Afro-Indigenous territorial governance in Latin America. Since 2014, he has conducted research alongside the Indigenous Rama and Black Kriol peoples of southeastern Nicaragua. As a fellow, Mayer supports the Oakland Institute's research and advocacy work in Nicaragua.
In addition to this work with the Oakland Institute, Mayer is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Connecticut. His current book project examines joint Indigenous and Black diasporic territory-building efforts amid settler colonial extraction and dispossession in Nicaragua. Mayer is also carrying out a new ethnographic project about the role of human rights and corporate social responsibility actors in the ongoing theft of Indigenous and Afrodescendant lands in Nicaragua.
Mayer earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, a master's degree in the social sciences from the University of Chicago, and a bachelor's degree in political science from Amherst College. His research has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright Program. Mayer was raised in Portage, Michigan, on the ancestral lands of the Bodéwadmi, Odawa, and Ojibwe peoples.
Karine Jacquemart, a Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute, is the Executive Director of Foodwatch France, an independent NGO. A passionate strategist dedicated to tackling the entrenched challenges to people' rights and livelihoods, the broken food system, natural resources management and land use, development issues and climate change, Jacquemart led the Greenpeace International's campaign to protect African Forests for more than six years. Prior to this she led humanitarian missions with Action Contre la Faim (ACF) in Sri Lanka, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, and Somalia.
Jacquemart has co-authored and co-produced numerous publications, including Palm oil's new frontier - How industrial expansion threatens Africa's rainforests and Stolen future: Conflicts and logging in Congo's rainforests - the case of Danzer (2011) with Greenpeace International (2012), as well as several reports with the Oakland Institute that exposed land grabbing and forest destruction in Cameroon, including Massive Deforestation Portrayed as Sustainable Investment: The Deceit of Herakles Farms in Cameroon (2012) and Herakles Exposed: the Truth Behind Herakles Farms False Promises in Cameroon (2013). She coauthored a joint opinion piece with Anuradha Mittal, Founder of the Oakland Institute: A Development Fairytale or a Global Land Rush? (2015).
Katherine is currently pursuing a BA in International Relations from Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California. She also studies French and Arabic. She spent a semester in Amman, Jordan studying Arabic and Geopolitics in the Middle East. She has been recognized for her research on the impact of gender quotas on the role of women in the Mexican government. Katherine has also published an article on the role of education in female labor force participation in Morocco.
Katherine's academic interests include female labor force participation, democratic participation, sustainable agriculture, and rural development. She is writing a year-long senior thesis on the origins and effects of gender quotas for women in government in different countries. As an Intern Scholar at the Oakland Institute, Katherine will explore the impact of land titling programs on local and Indigenous smallholder farms that currently use traditional land tenure and stewardship systems.
Kevin Hull is a graduate of San José State University, where he created his own major in order to study music and global development in tandem. Since then, he has worked for a ballet company, an online education startup, and a music school in the Himalayas, and is constantly seeking ways to bridge the arts with development and social justice.
In his work at the Oakland Institute, Kevin will be exploring land rights, and the ways that powerful corporations and governments can undermine not just security and prosperity, but also traditional values and lifestyles. He hopes that his research and advocacy can help preserve the richness and diversity of human societies around the world.
Khalid Mwakoba has a bachelors degree in Geography and Environmental Studies and is currently working on his master's thesis in natural resources management and assessment at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Khalid is also a distance-based master's student in Geographical Information System at Lund University, Sweden.
As an undergraduate, Khalid was an environmental education volunteer for Wildlife Conservation Society of Tanzania, a local leading environmental body reaching communities through radio programs and on-site visits. At present, he is a part-time language and cross-cultural facilitator for US Peace Corps Tanzania, training the volunteers in community-based training sites.
Khalid's interests are biodiversity, agriculture, land rights, cultural matters, climate change, human rights, and globalization.
Kristen Lyons is a social researcher and advocate working on issues related to development, the environment and energy futures. Kristen works across international settings, including East Africa, the Pacific, and Australia, has been engaged in work on forestry and carbon markets, Indigenous rights and resource extractivism, agro-forestry and organic agriculture.
Across each of these areas, Kristen is deeply engaged in investigating justice and rights dimensions and issues, including Indigenous rights, and her work contributes to public debates and policy.
Kristen was awarded a doctorate in Sociology from Central Queensland University, Australia, in 2001. Along with her background in Environmental Science, she has a strong commitment to research and advocacy that is focused on environmental and social justice. Kristen lives in Brisbane, Australia, where she is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Queensland. Here she directs the Masters of Development Practice, and has worked with the Global Change Institute to establish a Human Rights Consortium.
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- Senior Fellow With the
Lim Li Ching, a Senior Fellow with the Oakland Institute, works with the biosafety and sustainable agriculture programs at Third World Network, an international NGO based in Malaysia. Co-editor of the book Biosafety First, Li Ching has been actively participating at the UN Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety negotiations, its related experts' meetings and other international, regional and national biosafety meetings. She is currently a member of the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group on Socio-economic Considerations, established by Parties to the Cartagena Protocol.
Li Ching was a lead author in the East and South Asia and the Pacific (ESAP) sub-global report of the International Assessment on Agricultural Science, Technology and Knowledge for Development (IAASTD) (2009), and also contributed to the Agriculture chapter of the UN Environment Programme's publication, Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development and Poverty Eradication (2011). She was also a co-editor of Climate Change and Food Systems Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa, published by FAO (2011).
Lindsey Wolin is a senior at the University of Oregon with a global studies major and Spanish minor. She is focusing on human rights and law in Latin America with interest in the experiences of the Indigenous communities. Lindsey spent four months in Valparaíso, Chile learning about developmental and cultural struggles post 17 year dictatorship. She is keen to learn how the Global North plays a significant role in the economic, social, and political hardships that many developing countries face. At the Oakland Institute, she is focusing on the World Bank Group and the ways in which it works with the Global North to push neoliberal reforms on Third World nations. Outside of the office, she does a lot of reading, pet sitting, rock climbing, make/and or listen to music.
Luis is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with undergraduate degrees in Political Economy and History. His academic interests include postcolonialism, international development, the political economy of higher education, and institutional change. His writing has been published in the Berkeley Undergraduate Journal, the Berkeley Political Review, the Daily Californian, and the Berkeley Planning Journal. A recipient of the Judith Lee Stronach Baccalaureate Prize, Luis will spend the 2013-14 school year along the US-Mexico border exploring the relationship between transnational credit dependence, Mexican structural adjustment, and immigration policy in the context of the Great Recession.
Luis is committed to producing research that not only addresses the needs of the marginalized but is also generated with these communities.
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- Senior Fellow With the
Marcia Ishii-Eiteman, a Senior Fellow with the Oakland Institute, is a Senior Scientist and Director of the Grassroots Science Program at Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA). PANNA's Grassroots Science Program facilitates community engagement in the use of scientific tools and processes in order to strengthen community-based advocacy for social change and build public authority over policy and public resources. Ishii-Eiteman's specific campaign activities at PANNA focus on supporting and strengthening agroecology movements and policies in the U.S. and globally, and challenging corporate power and influence in agriculture with a focus on the biotech/pesticide industry and herbicide-resistant genetically engineered seeds.
Before joining PANNA in 1996, Ishii-Eiteman worked in Asia and Africa in rural development projects for over 12 years, facilitating government-farmer-NGO collaborations on sustainable agriculture in Southeast Asia and developing a farmer-based ecological pest management education project in Thailand. Previously, she worked on agricultural livelihood projects in Somali refugee camps and on women's health and literacy projects with Khmer refugees. Her doctoral research focused on Thai farmers' rice cultivation practices and biological control of rice insect pests. Ishii-Eiteman holds a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from Cornell University and a BA in women's studies and politics from Yale University. She has written extensively on the ecological, social and political dimensions of food and agriculture and was a lead author of the UN-sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development.
Maya Tsingos is a recent graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied Biology, and spent much of her time working at the student-run garden and on urban farms. She is interested in climate justice and public health. As well as being an Intern Scholar, Maya is an EMT operating in the Bay Area. In her free time, she enjoys reading, writing poetry, and doing arts and crafts.
McCoy is a senior at UC Berkeley pursuing a BA in Political Economy with a concentration in Latin American Development. Although his studies are multifaceted, he is chiefly interested in the role of agroecological peasant movements as a tool to combat ecological devastation and bring about redistributive justice.
McCoy previously worked with a research team at Berkeley's Institute for Research on Labor and Employment in an effort to build an index measuring the efficacy of national policies as they relate to sustainability, quality of life, and market structures. He believes that with the right mixture of accountable leadership, democratic participation and comprehensive support networks, every person can lead a fulfilling and meaningful life. As an Intern Scholar with the Oakland Institute, McCoy hopes to combat land dispossession, promote environmental welfare and protect the rights of the most vulnerable.
Melanie is a 2012 graduate of Brown University with an undergraduate degree in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Her academic interests include international agricultural trade, labor rights, rising food prices, and supply chain transparency.
Melanie has worked to improve employment conditions and living wages for workers across the food supply chain. As a paralegal at Joseph & Kirschenbaum LLP, she helped represent restaurant employees in New York City who were victims of wage theft and discrimination. She has also advocated alongside the Coalition of Immokalee Workers to pressure supermarkets into signing a fair food agreement that would improve working conditions in Florida's tomato fields. Melanie is passionate about exploring the interconnectedness between international trade, access to food, food aid, and land rights.
Mikael Bergius, a Fellow at the Oakland Institute, works on linkages between global policies/food regimes, local resource use, and land rights. His latest work has focused on the contemporary expansion of the Corporate Food Regime in Africa through the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania (SAGCOT) and its implications for rural households. Bergius has a background in development studies from the University of Agder in Norway and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. After receiving his Master's degree in International Environmental Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) in Aas, Mikael is now working at NMBU as a Phd Research Fellow.
Mirabai Venkatesh is going into her second year at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies where she is pursuing her masters degree in international relations.
Nadine Zahiruddin is a senior at Claremont McKenna College, where she is studying International Relations and Public Policy. Interested in the intersection between international affairs, environmental issues and human rights, her studies focus on examining global policies that fail in protecting marginalized communities and the world's resources, and finding innovative solutions to these problems.
Nadine previously conducted research as a student assistant on the impact of palm oil plantations on Indigenous Dayaks in Indonesia and how encroachment by companies led to land dispossession and the loss of Indigenous cultures and traditions. As an Intern Scholar, Nadine is excited to gain further knowledge, alongside the Oakland Institute's experts, about Indigenous land rights and advocacy strategies to protect welfare of the people.
Naomi graduated at the top of her department from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia with a BA in Anthropology. While there she conducted research with the CDC on food access and diabetes and worked in a Medical Botany lab at the University to study the medicinal properties of plant life in conjunction with traditional knowledge systems.
She later received her MA in Gastronomy from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy with a focus on Food Anthropology and Diaspora. For her research she spent two months living in a migrant shelter in Tijuana to explore the ways asylum-seekers from different nationalities navigate their collective liminality via food choices.
Her other interests include the creation of diverse, accessible and affordable food systems within large urban cities, the use of biomimicry within engineering to mitigate and build resistance against climate change, and the preservation and integration of traditional ecological knowledge in both rural and urban societies.
Nellie Skiba, a bee keeper and gardener, spends time nurturing the bees who make honey from the wild flowers in the fields of her village in Auvergne, France. At the Oakland Institute, she fans her passion for land rights and justice by supporting the executive team. Previously, she worked as a geologist in the Scientific Research Institute in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. Nellie has a degree in Engineering (Petroleum & Gas Geology) from Rostov-on-Don State University, Russia.
Noah Linde is an Oakland native currently studying Political Science at UC Santa Barbara. He is returning to school after a year of waiting tables and writing and performing comedy in Chicago. When he isn't studying or providing editorial support for the Oakland Institute, Noah can usually be found biking or hiking in one of the East Bay Regional Parks.
Trained as a sociologist, Paola has spent the last 3 years conducting critical evaluations of Chilean public programs that address inequality in different dimensions, such as pension, pay gaps, access to health and housing, and protection of women under the law. She has also taught historical sociology, introductory sociological theory, and introductory social methodology as adjunct instructor at Chilean University for over five years.
Motivated by the belief that public policy must be informed by evidence-based research in order to create more efficient, effective and ethically responsible programs, Paola is interested in studying social inequality from a global and environmental perspective. During her time at the Oakland Institute, she is interested in studying how the economic development paradigm propagated by International Institutions such as the World Bank in the developing world affect people's livelihoods and daily well-being.
Peiley graduated from Stanford University in 2012 with a bachelor's degree in Economics. During her studies at Stanford, she researched the effects of agricultural subsidies on American corn production and the impact of urban food deserts on African-American health. Peiley has worked on a Midwestern organic family farm implementing sustainable agricultural practices. She currently teaches nutrition and healthful cooking courses to the underserved immigrant community of East Palo Alto.
Peiley's academic interests include the role of sustainable food systems in developing economies, the impact of international aid on agriculture and health, food security, and food sovereignty.
Job Titles:
- Fellow
- Associate Professor of Political Science at the American University
Rabab El Mahdi is Associate Professor of Political Science at The American University in Cairo. Her research focuses on the political economy of developmental policies, as well as social movements in the Middle East and North Africa. She is the founding Director of Alternative Policy Solutions, a research center which aims at producing progressive alternatives to neoliberal policies in Egypt and the global South. She previously taught at Yale University and was a recipient of a number of fellowships at Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and the Rockefeller Bellagio Center Residency.
Sasha is pursuing a BA in Environmental Studies with a minor in International and Global Studies at Portland State University. Sasha writes for two student-run newspapers at her University on politics of international aid and development and global environmental issues. She intends to continue her academic career into graduate school.
Sasha's academic interests are in cultural and political geography, international relations, development and globalization. She is passionate about human rights, land rights, political and food-based social movements and Latin American history. As an Intern Scholar at Oakland Institute, Sasha hopes to expose the human rights violations associated with land grab schemes perpetuated by multinational corporations.
Shaan Sood is a Junior at Head Royce School in Oakland. In addition to competing on the national parliamentary debate circuit, Shaan works as a research intern for the vice mayor of Santa Rosa. As an Intern Scholar at the Oakland Institute, Shaan is researching the Western conservation industry's impact on Indigenous land rights in Northern Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is working on taking his skillset of argumentation and academic writing and applying them to researching community-led struggles to impact real-world change.
Simran Sethi is a multimedia journalist, academic, and public speaker who is endlessly curious about food, agriculture, and stories beyond the plate.
Named one of the "50 Most Influential Global Indians" by Vogue India and the "environmental messenger" by Vanity Fair, Simran has written for outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, The Washington Post, Guernica, and The Guardian. She is the author of Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love - named one of the best food books of 2016 by Smithsonian - about the loss of agricultural biodiversity told through the lens of flavor. She is the contributing author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, winner of a 2008 Axiom Award for Best Business Ethics Book.
Simran is the creator of The Slow Melt, the first podcast on the cultural, economic, and environmental stories behind chocolate and the winner of the 2017 SAVEUR award for Best Food Podcast. She is also a contributor to the National Public Radio program Good Food, and was one of the first inductees into Heritage Radio Network's Hall of Fame.
Simran serves as summer faculty in Italy at John Cabot University in Rome and the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo where she teaches courses on food writing and communication of sustainability and food sovereignty. She is a former visiting scholar at the Cocoa Research Centre, based at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad, and the former environmental correspondent for NBC News, which included contributions to CNBC, MSNBC, and Nightly News. Simran has produced environmental programming for PBS and Sundance Channel, and was the host of the EMMY Award-winning documentary A School in the Woods. She holds an M.B.A. in sustainable business from the Presidio Graduate School and graduated cum laude with a B.A. in sociology and women's studies from Smith College. In 2009, the College awarded her the Smith College Medal.
Soleil Mousseau is a senior at Head-Royce School in Oakland. She has interned with the Oakland Institute since her freshman year, pursuing her interest in how neocolonialism impacts today's world. Soleil is assisting (and learning) through research assignments examining the impact that neocolonial extractive indisutry and conservation practices have on Indigenous communities in Tanzania, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
When Soleil is not doing community service activities with her friends, she loves to hike and listen to 80s music!
Sonja Swift co-directs Windrose Fund of Common Counsel Foundation, is board chair of the Community Agroecology Network and also serves on the boards of the Colorado Plateau Foundation, Pine Ridge Girls School and Swift Foundation. In traversing between the halls of economic influence and the courageous work of communities protecting lifeways and territory, Sonja has consistently advocated for more accountability and coherency within the field of philanthropy. She brings over 15 years of international experience to this work and an unwavering commitment to support the lived knowledge of communities on the ground.
Sonja hails from coastal foothills in the homelands of the yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash, California while together with her family she also calls home in the unceded territory of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, in the Black Hills, South Dakota. She has a BA in Cultural Ecology from the University of California Santa Cruz, an individualized MA from Goddard College and a MFA in creative writing from California College of the Arts. She is committed to caretaking land and maintains an art practice as a published writer and poet. Sonja is the author of Echo Loba, Loba Echo: Of Wisdom, Wolves and Women (Rocky Mountain Books, 2023), which was shortlisted for the Banff Mountain Film & Books environmental literature award.
Sophie Weiss is a recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, with a degree in Geography focusing on International Development. While in school, Sophiespent a semester working with a Mexican immigrant community to build a community garden in Southern California, and spent six months in Nepal studying language and researching the World Bank's Poverty Alleviation Fund in the middle hill region. At Sarah Lawrence, she researched American urban agriculture as a form of community development and the layered impacts of multiple international aid programs in areas of conflict in Central and East Africa.
Sophie is passionate about international resource and land rights, globalization, local food systems, food security, and state sovereignty. She is a printmaker and vegan cook outside of the Oakland Institute, and enjoys drawing connections between her academic, creative, and culinary projects through themes of community, ecology, and sustainability.
Stephane Nanga is a 4th year undergraduate student majoring in Political Science and minoring in Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley. His interests include land investments in Africa, the politics of development, economic inequality, and international trade policies.
Nanga was a Research Assistant in the Political Science Department of UC Berkeley where he worked on a study that assessed the effectiveness and level of autonomy of anti-corruption agencies in African countries. As an intern at the Oakland Institute, Nanga hopes to refine his understanding of the structural barriers to development in low-income countries, and contribute to the research and advocacy work of the Institute.
Victor Menotti is a Senior Fellow at the Oakland Institute in California but since 2016 has been based in Bratislava, Slovakia, where he works as the US Coordinator of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ). He has advised both developing and developed country governments, small producers in the farming, fishing and forestry sectors, as well as labor unions, indigenous peoples' organizations and environmental groups on global rule-making for natural resources in trade, investment, finance and technology policies. Since 2007, he has also been deeply involved in global climate negotiations at the UNFCCC.