Katie Michels

Katie graduated the Joint Masters of Environmental Science and MBA program at the Yale School of the Environment and Yale School of Management. She studied the role working lands play in healthy, resilient human and natural communities, and how human actions can increase ecosystem health on farms and in forests. Her thesis research is looking at how the actions, values, and capacity of farmers inform their relationships with their land, and what outcomes (human and ecological) they manage their land for. She is also interested in the interactions between land, policy, and power, and how new conceptions of property or creative financial or legal tools can increase access to land for new and beginning farmers and historically marginalized groups of people.

Katie has worked and plans to continue to work in the intersections between land conservation, land stewardship, and supporting businesses that use sustainably produced food and wood. Prior to attending Yale, she worked at the Vermont Housing & Conservation Board and the High Meadows Fund, where her work supported capacity and businesses development among food system and land conservation non-profits as well as local farm and food businesses. She has a B.A. in Geography and Environmental Studies from Middlebury College.

Katie has called Vermont and Montana home. In her free time, she enjoys spending time outdoors, gardening, and cooking.