Caitlin Cogdill

university of montana - Environmental Studies Program, College of Forestry and Conservation

Caitlin Cogdill is pursuing her Masters of Science in Environmental Studies with a focus on food systems and Indigenous land-care practices. This interest was fostered while living on Hawaiʻi Island and volunteering at the Amy Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, where she saw the ingenuity of place-based, traditional agricultural systems at work, symbiotically serving ecological and community needs. Bolstered by a thirteen-year career as a leader in nonprofit organizations of all sizes, from the Wikimedia Foundation to Earthjustice to one of the largest food banks in the country, Caitlin is researching the potential for traditional, Indigenous-led food sovereignty projects to enhance conservation goals while restoring environmental justice and a reciprocal relationship to land.