Jill Jakimetz brings her food world experience as a farmer, baker, administrator, and educator together with her academic experience in ecocriticism, art, landscape architecture, environmental policy, and geography. She holds a BA and MA in environmental studies from Bates College and the University of Oregon and continues to explore the feedback loop between cultural imagination and the environment. Her invaluable agricultural training began with two years as a MOFGA apprentice and continued with work at a few farms, including Wintergreen Farm in Oregon. Jill's year as a Fulbright Fellow to the European Union gave her insight into the beginnings of public policy support for "high-nature value farming" in Ireland and other forms of "multifunctional agriculture" in the Netherlands and across the EU, along with the cultural and organizational challenges that come alongside. Jill is a certified forest therapy guide, an approach which she adapts to help open ways for people to experience farms, soil, self, and nature in a new way.
