Each new season brings changes to our environment and the Swetland Center is embracing the changes in the air!
Our center would like to thank those that have moved on, while also welcoming our newest additions to the team, Brooke Kahl + Owusua Yamoah.
Brooke Kahl, BA, Program Manager, Nourishing Power
Brooke Kahl is thrilled to continue with the Swetland Center as the Nourishing Power Program Manager following her one-year tenure as foodNEST 2.0 Project Manager. She is committed to advancing environmental justice, especially food justice, through community-led initiatives. Prior to the Swetland Center, Brooke worked with Community Foundation Boulder County to inspire local philanthropy, including environmental and regenerative agriculture giving, and to help nonprofits grow their endowments. Additionally, Brooke served with FoodCorps in Arizona to promote healthy school food environments, worked as a research assistant at the University of Michigan to explore NAFTA’s impact on agricultural land use, and interned with The Chef’s Garden in Milan, Ohio. Brooke has volunteered with community-centric health initiatives in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, Ohio, and Argentina. Brooke grew up on the west side of Cleveland and graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Studies (Pathway: “Cross-Sector Collaboration with Special Interest in the Environment and Public Health”) and Sustainable Foods Systems.
Nourishing Power boasts an ambitious cross-institution team, and Brooke is excited to continue collaboration with this impressive group of individuals. Additionally, Brooke is enthusiastic about the potential to uplift community-driven food justice initiatives through the implementation work of Nourishing Power and to learn more about social network analysis from the evaluation work. She looks forward to connecting with many wonderful people leading food systems change in her home city of Cleveland, Ohio.
Owusua Yamoah, PhD, MA, Research Scientist
Dr. Yamoah is socio-spatial scientist with expertise in Geographic Information Science (GISc), qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. She holds a PhD in Spatially Integrated Social Sciences from the University of Toledo (UT), a Master of Art in Urban Studies, Graduate certificates in Urban Planning and Land Use Management from Minnesota State University (MSU) and a Bachelor of Science in Development Planning from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Her research agenda is an amalgamation of three interrelated themes: Food systems and Health Disparities, Geospatial Analysis for Community development, and COVID-19 and Community Health. Her current projects focus on the use of geospatial technologies, qualitative interviews, photo elicitation and engaged systems-level interventions to promote equitable food systems and food sovereignty in the city of Cleveland, Ohio.
In her new role as the Research Scientist, Dr. Yamoah is looking forward to leading the evaluation of the Nourishing Neighborhoods Empowering Communities Study, a community-engaged systems-level intervention. She is also excited about the opportunity to growing her research and the Food Systems and Health Equity research portfolio of the Swetland Center.