Leah Poole, ’20, entered Meredith College as a Wings (Meredith’s adult education program) student. While at Meredith, she enjoyed the small learning environment, made lifelong friends, and began carving her path to her current passion, improving the humanitarian response to climatic events.

Poole initially majored in food and nutrition but realized during her senior year that it may not have been the best path for her. However, she found a passion for agriculture and the environment that same year, thanks to a class with her professor, Rachel Findley. 

“She’s very into farming and farmer appreciation. She always said, ‘If you ate today, thank a farmer.’ So we visited all these farms, and I loved it. I knew I wasn’t enjoying dietetics, but I really loved these farms, so I started farming. And that’s what led me to apply to Tufts University,” she said.

Every program at Tufts requires students to conduct a project that gives back to the community. Poole’s project was based on public health, and she worked for the Climate Centre to complete her project. The Climate Centre works to help the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement reduce the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on vulnerable people.

“We were tracking air pollution and how that affects mortality, and then taking that information and making it accessible to the public,” she said. “I made short form documents that explain, ‘this is what pollution looks like where you live, and this is what you can do about it to protect yourself.”

While attending graduate school, Poole found herself making connections with farmers and learned how climate change was impacting their ability to grow crops. Her interest led to her meeting professor Erin Coughlan de Perez, who focuses on the intersection of climate change and humanitarian aid.

“That got me involved in international studies and human health, agricultural health, and food and nutrition as it relates to people who don’t have food, and then natural disasters and how that’s all related.

Poole currently works as a researcher with Coughlan de Perez at Tufts on a project that received a $2 million grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“The work is focused on acting on disasters when they’re forecasted rather than after they happen,” Poole said. “So, when we know a hurricane is coming, we help people evacuate. Or we get them food resources, shelter in place resources, things like that before, rather than responding after the disaster, because it’s cheaper to get people out than to send a search and rescue team. And it also saves lives.”

Poole may still be figuring out where she sits in the realm of humanitarian aid, but for now, she loves what she is doing and hopes to continue creating positive change in the world.