People

Jasmine (she/her) is from Boscawen, New Hampshire, and recently completed her BS in Environmental Studies. Even though she comes from a small town, she adores urban ecology and hopes to help inspire a love and understanding of nature wherever she goes. She thinks that beautiful connections with the natural world can be found anywhere, and nowhere is that easier to see than in the land of insects. She spent about a year studying ants and would love to tell you a bug fact, even if all but butterflies give you the creepy-crawlies. Jasmine is excited to spend the summer working with friends of all types, from people to plants. In her spare time, you can find her rock climbing in West Rock, looking for frogs in Edgewood Park, and reading in Rainbow Park. 

Danielle is a rising Junior at Yale College who is passionate about learning how changes in social structures can improve public health, as well as environmental health and sustainability. Originally from Jamaica, she has lived in West Haven for a couple years and is looking forward to getting to know New Haven and its residents more intimately this summer through the Community Greenspace initiatives. In her free time she enjoys painting, playing ukulele, riding her bike, and being outdoors.

Liz is a 2023 Community Forester Intern with URI. She recently finished her first year as a Master of Environmental Management candidate at the Yale School of Environment with a specialization in Ecosystem Conservation and Management. Her work experiences encompass climate change research; science-based communication; and air quality monitoring. Liz is passionate about working with people and loves to learn about plants!

Roan is a rising sophomore in Yale College majoring in Environmental Studies. Immediately after moving to New Haven she fell in love with the city's many parks and is excited to be working with the community members who beautify and steward these spaces! In addition to community-based environmental initiatives, Roan is interested in environmental policy and management, and has experience doing policy research, exploring the ecology of parks where she is from (Pittsburgh!), working as an environmental educator, and doing trail maintenance on the Appalachian Trail. She loves to learn and is always looking for a new subject to dive into or a place to explore. In her free time, she enjoys camping, writing, art, and taking long walks around New Haven with no specific destination in mind.

Chris is most at home when wandering the forests and sharing the wonders of these places with others. Chris graduated from Warren Wilson College with a degree in Environmental Education. After graduating, he served as a founding member of an expeditionary learning public charter school and taught high school courses in Environmental Science & Adventure Leadership in Asheville, NC . He also instructed wilderness expeditions for 7 years with the North Carolina Outward Bound School.

Chris is currently a Master's of Forestry student at the Yale School of the Environment. He is interested in the wild untapped possibilities in our urban, suburban, & rural landscapes to combine urban forestry, agroforestry, and natural forest regeneration techniques to create food forests and deepen the relationships of people with the land.

Musa is a Master of Forestry candidate at the Yale School of the Environment. Her passion for social forestry grew when she worked as a forester in Zimbabwe prior to coming to Yale. She is excited to be joining URI as an intern this summer, in community building, environmental restoration and in stewardship of Green Spaces.

Gabe LePage is a joint degree student in Yale Divinity School and the Yale School of the Environment. He graduated from Calvin College in 2016 with degrees in Geography and International Development Studies. Afterwards, he spent a year learning about Asset Based Community Development from Great Lakes Urban in his neighborhood in Grand Rapids, MI. Interested in land and the connections between a healthy relationship with the environment and people’s wealth, he moved to Florida to study agriculture as an intern with ECHO Inc, a small scale farming resource and training organization. 

Gabe is happy to be in New Haven and working with URI, an organization that marries international community development approaches to urban landscape restoration and poverty alleviation. He worked with GreenSkills to plant trees and is now looking forward to supporting community groups to improve bits of their neighborhoods. 

Austin likes to think about food and justice. Part of thinking about those things involves also thinking about space, place, history, politics, power, plants, and people. *Those* things brought Austin to the Greenspace program. Also, Austin loves New Haven.

Logan is a rising junior in Yale College majoring in Environmental Studies, with a concentration in Urban Environments. She grew up with forests and rivers as playgrounds which sparked her love for the outdoors. Although she was born and raised in rural Virginia, Logan considers New Haven to be her urban home and enjoys searching for more ways to incorporate the natural world into her life in a city. One way she does this is through working with the Yale Sustainable Food Program and spending time at the Yale Farm. She is fascinated with the challenges that urban areas are facing due to climate change and with the complexities of sustainable living. She looks forward to all of the knowledge and growth that she will experience while working with the New Haven community, her fellow interns, and the URI staff this summer.

Monica graduated F&ES with Masters of Environmental Management in 2018. Before coming to FES as a Fulbright Scholar, she worked for the Peruvian Ministry of Environment, supervising and training officials from local and regional governments, improving the implementation of their environmental control functions in matters of forestry and agricultural issues, among others.

A lawyer by training, Monica hopes to work across disciplines and help bridge communication gaps between private and public sector, project developers and communities, and among policy makers and science professionals.

Her focus at URI will be to support community leaders and help the residents of New Haven tailor adaptive solutions to achieve their common goals, while learning from the expertise of group leaders and encouraging participation of youth and women especially.

Cara Donovan is a joint degree masters student at FES and the School of Public Health at Yale. She grew up in Bristol, Rhode Island and graduated from Connecticut College in 2008 with a major in Environmental Studies and Hispanic Studies. Her focus is on improving health and the environment through sustainable food systems. Prior to starting her program at Yale, she worked at CitySeed as a Volunteer & Outreach Coordinator and later as Mobile Market Manager. She looks forward to continuing to work in the New Haven community and learning from the many knowledgeable greenspace volunteers!

Jeremy is a current student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies (FES), focusing on environmental policy analysis and climate adaptation at the local and regional level. Before attending Yale FES, he worked in the U.S. Senate and at Bloomberg BNA, researching and analyzing environmental health and safety regulations at the state and federal level. Jeremy is excited to work within the Greater New Haven Community to transform and beautify community greenspaces this summer.

Caroline (Caro) is an urban forester and ISA certified arborist originally from the San Francisco, CA. She graduated from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies in 2018 and fell in love with New Haven while working for URI as a graduate student. Previous to receiving her Master of Forestry, Caro taught elementary school in the San Francisco Bay Area, ran a school garden program, worked on urban farms, and built large wooden structures with children at the San Francisco Tinkering School.

Before joining URI's team full-time, Caro was an apprentice forester with the Yale School Forests and later the Urban and Community Forestry Program Coordinator at Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management. She is delighted to be back in the Elm City, working with so many wonderful partners to care for New Haven's urban forest.

Lauren is a joint degree student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and Yale Divinity School. Before coming to Yale she worked with a non-profit organization, Capital Roots, that worked to increase access to fresh, affordable, and nutritious food in the New York capital region. After working with urban agriculture and food access, Lauren is enjoying working on cities' approaches to greenspace and forestry projects this summer with URI.

Ohio native Max Webster is a Master of Environmental Management Candidate at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies where he focuses on community-based approaches to conservation and sustainable land management practices. After graduating from the University of Cincinnati in 2012, with a degree in English Literature, Max managed community garden programs in Ohio before leading conservation crews on the west coast and spending a summer farming in Vermont. During this past school year, Max was part of the URI Greenskills team and also served as a contributing editor for Sage Magazine.