Biography
Alaina brings 6 years of experience working on several Certified Organic specialty crop farms, advocating for better food and agricultural systems, and navigating several non-profit and governmental agency’s opportunities for improving agricultural and food systems in Minnesota and Illinois. Embedded into Alaina’s work are racial, gender, and environmental justice, which need to be core principles within agricultural and food sectors.
They are a graduate of the University of Minnesota Duluth, with a degree in Environment, Sustainability, and Geography and certificates in Geographic Information Sciences Certificate and Sustainable Leadership. They are also a current fellow of the USDA Climate Adaptation and Mitigation Fellowship and a former fellow of the Wallace School’s Regenerative Agriculture Fellowship.
Alaina also works as a Planning Analyst for the Kane County Farmland Protection Program in Illinois. They also bring to the table experience in business technical assistance, grant administration, project management, and has worked within grocery stores, food service operations, and e-commerce operations.
In their free time, Alaina can be found gardening, foraging, thrifting with their wife, going to comedy shows and concerts, and admiring their cat, Komi, and leopard gecko, Cowboy.