I grew up in Caracas Venezuela, and as a child, I remember feeling fascinated by the little seeds that a few weeks later became a plant producing tomatoes and peppers. I used to love visiting my uncle’s farm to see how the fresh milk would later become cheese that would go into our arepas for dinner. This sense of wonder and curiosity brought me to study Philosophy alongside Biological and Agricultural Engineering with a focus on food processing.

A few years later, as an engineering researcher, I worked with hog farmers in North Carolina to evaluate opportunities to improve waste management and reduce methane emissions. It was one of those moments in life when things all come together. I came across the work of Donella Meadows and discovered systems thinking. At the same time, I started volunteering with Farm Aid in North Carolina to support immigrant farmworkers and started leading culinary literacy classes for Latino low-income families with the No Kid Hungry program. I became keenly aware of the limitations of my engineering training; how little I actually knew about food security from a social and policy perspective, and how that limited my ability to identify opportunities and engineer solutions that embraced the true complexity of food systems challenges.

Seeing the divergent realities that existed between the agricultural fields and what was being discussed in the engineering conferences I was attending, I decided to pursue my second Master’s degree in Public Policy at UC Berkeley– with a focus on innovation, systems thinking, and food policy. There, I supported and advocated for food insecure students as part of the Basic Needs Committee, where I led efforts to develop a screener assessment tool designed to connect at-risk students with campus resources. I learned how vital community participatory processes are in designing, developing, and delivering impactful programs.