Farm Alumni Michelle Venetucci double majored in Community, Environment, and Planning (CEP) and Anthropology at the UW, graduating in 2011. During her time here she volunteered at a nascent UW Farm; read about her experience at the Farm during it’s early years and how it impacted her academically and professionally.

How you were involved in the farm?

I was involved with the farm from 2008 – 2011. When I joined, there were only a small handful of people involved. I led Outreach for a year, including building and maintaining a website and blog, sending out weekly e-letters, and creating our Facebook page. I also served on the farm leadership committee when we established a Board of Directors. I helped expand the farm to the Center for Urban Horticulture (CUH). My senior project for Community, Environment, and Planning was about creating partnerships between the farm and different entities on campus during the expansion process, and I collaborated with CUH and Seattle Tilth as a part of that.

How did the Farm contribute you your degree and college experience?

The farm meant so much to me during college. First and foremost, it gave me a group of people that I’m very grateful to have spent time with. The farm was an intensely vibrant place to grow as a person, and I’ll always cherish the people it exposed me to. The farm also gave me the opportunity to try out many “professional” hats – I learned that I’m a bit more interested in building websites than I am in actually farming, but that I’m really invested in supporting sustainable agriculture. I learned a lot about partnership building, project management, volunteer outreach, and how to run a productive meeting. I learned how to collaborate with people who had the same goals as you, and how to compromise with larger entities that didn’t. I use so many of these skills now in my day-to-day job and in life in general.

What are you doing now?

I currently live in the Bay Area. I was an Education Programs Manager for the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) for two years, where part of my job was leading day-long farm tours for busloads of people. Over the past few years I’ve made a transition to tech, and currently work as a Product Designer and frontend developer for thoughtbot in San Francisco. I will always be grateful that the UW Farm was where I learned to build my first website, and showed me just how useful a skillset that could be. Just goes to show that you can learn a lot more than just farming at the UW Farm.

Anything else you would like to share?

My favorite part about the farm was that if you had an idea or a passion, you could create something with it. I wasn’t actually very involved in the act of farming, but I thought we needed some sort of web presence – so I built my first WordPress site for the farm. Everyone was starting projects, whether they were building moveable chicken coops or creating a beekeeping group; it’s a great time to experiment and explore.