Advocacy & Policy 101 Series - Citizen Science for Local Change: My Time on the Bloomington Food Policy Council with Jennifer Studebaker

For this month's installment of WFAN's Advocacy & Policy 101 webinar series, join WFAN's Executive Director Jennifer Studebaker as she shares about her time as the Assessment Working Group Chair and later Secretary of the Bloomington Food Policy Council (BFPC).

As a recent anthropology graduate, Jennifer volunteered with the BFPC to fight for food security and food sovereignty in her then home of Bloomington, Indiana. She will share about how she connected with the group, led a team in conducting community surveys and related research, and how those findings were translated and shared with local city leadership. This webinar should be of interest to anyone wondering how to get more involved in their community and develop their professional skills as a volunteer.

Jennifer joined WFAN as Interim Executive Director in April 2025, and she officially started as WFAN's full-time Executive Director this January. Previous to this, Jennifer founded her own consulting practice, Studebaker Consulting LLC. She has worked in nonprofits including the Society for Ethnomusicology and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation along with businesses like mySidewalk and SMG. She is a current co-chair of the Anthropoogy Career Readiness Network, providing guidance to students and instructors on careers in and with anthropology, and you can find her recent book, Career Tools for Anthroplogy on Amazon. She currently lives in Kansas City, MO, but you can catch her travelling around the country between WFAN and ACRN.

The presentation will include time for Q&A. The webinar will be recorded and available on the WFAN YouTube Channel.