School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Natalia Hinds '20

Job: Program Associate at Rutgers Cooperative Extension, Hudson County 4-H Major(s): Anthropology

An interview with Natalia

What was your hometown when you came to TCNJ?

Newark, NJ

Where do you currently call your hometown?

Kearny, NJ

When you were studying here, where did you picture yourself after graduation?

I thought I would be in fundraising forever but I ended up finding my current role and going back to doing what I love which has always been urban gardening and fell in love with teaching.

What was your first job after graduating?

Development Associate at Waterfront Alliance

How do you use your Anthropology degree in your current career and other activities?

In the programs we develop at Hudson County 4-H, we incorporate anthropological-sociological explorations of food such as exploring our identity and culture through food, agricultural anthropology, and the environmental, health, social, and political dynamics and implications of our urban industrialized food systems. Our kids love to use anthropological methods, like interviewing, to learn from their families and community members about culturally significant crops, their uses, recipes, and more so we use this a lot in our assignments and projects to open space for youth to explore and develop this skill. We also try to align our crop plans at our learning gardens to incorporate culturally important crops that our community has a high demand for and low access to (such as amaranth, bitter melon, scotch bonnets, callaloo, aji amarillo, etc.).