Oct 13, 2021
Editor’s Note: Get to know the amazing team at Agritecture! This interview features Sarah Janjua, Junior Consultant at Agritecture Consulting.
Pathway to Agritecture
Working out of New York, Sarah has been part of Agritecture’s family for almost a year. With an interest in sustainability in the built environment, and the role that research, data analysis, and reporting play in helping deliver strategic thinking for the same, Sarah has been exploring different urban agriculture tracts for the past few years.
Prior to joining Agritecture, Sarah earned her Master of Science degree in Sustainability Management from Columbia University, and her Bachelor of Science in Physical Geography from Portland State University.
Through her undergraduate degree, Sarah built her research and data analysis skills via a variety of field and lab work. With “the opportunity to work on two separately funded research projects,” she was able to study “the impacts of sea-level rise on soil formation processes, with an emphasis on soil carbon sequestration,” and “the impacts of urbanization on a watershed in Vancouver, Washington.”
Narrowing Down To Sustainability In The Built Environment
Sarah at Farm.One’s TriBeCa farm
In graduate school, through “regularly touring different green-certified buildings and green infrastructure projects” throughout NYC during her time as Vice President of Build it Green, a student group at Columbia University, Sarah realized that urban and controlled environment agriculture, “when strategically thought through, have the ability to address a myriad of urban sustainability challenges.”
She continued to develop her interest in urban agriculture through volunteering “for NYC AgTech Week 2019, assisting with community garden tours around the Lower East Side and setting up different panel events.” She shares that her volunteering efforts earned her “opportunities to sit in on different discussions and learn about current challenges and opportunities in the space from the leaders in the industry themselves.” This furthered how she viewed sustainability in the built environment and the role that urban and controlled environment agriculture can play.
During this time, she also gained a variety of sustainability-consulting-related experiences. “This included project managing teams of graduate student consultants that authored a sustainability report for a New York City-based vertical farming company and also helping a premier event venue take their sustainability initiatives to the next level in terms of building energy efficiency and operational efficiencies (including food procurement and seasonal menu development, laundry services procurement, etc).”
Strategizing Sustainability For Agritecture’s Clients
After completing her graduate degree, Sarah freelanced as a sustainability consultant. She helped “high-end catering companies around New York City with sustainability initiatives,” and worked on “strategic sustainability communications initiatives for the green building industry.”
Sarah shares that “having jumped from academic research to outdoor environmental education after undergrad and then hospitality and green building sustainability consulting after grad school,” she often wondered if her varied interests and “experiences would ever come together and all be applicable in one role.”
Caption: Sarah was recently named an urban farming meme queen! This is one of her submissions to the 12 Steps of Farming’s Urban Farming Meme Tournament, in collaboration with Agritecture’s Systems Engineer, Alberto Lopez.
These skills she gained proved to be extremely valuable for the work she would lead at Agritecture. “These past 10 months consulting for Agritecture have confirmed the notion that the meandering path I traveled to get me to where I am today was not in vain. As a Junior Consultant for Agritecture that contributes to the majority of consulting projects we work on, I am constantly tapping into the knowledge and resources from my past experiences.”
Bringing Her Varied Experiences Together
Sarah finds herself “regularly tapping into the sustainability skills that I was able to refine during my time as a Sustainability Management Fellow with the Earth Institute at Columbia University, including helping clients navigate sustainable packaging options, third-party reviewing sustainability assessments of CEA operations, providing guidance on data and information collection strategies for informing annual sustainability reports, and advising on effective sustainability-related communications.”
She has additionally taken advantage of her freelance experience working with high-end catering companies, during working with Agritecture client, Melia Desert Palm. “Having worked in the restaurant industry for many years, I was very excited to work with the head chef throughout the concept development process to align the outputs of the experiential greenhouse and outdoor food production spaces with the needs of the restaurants within the resort.”
Caption: Sarah was recently named an urban farming meme queen! This is one of her submissions to the 12 Steps of Farming’s Urban Farming Meme Tournament, in collaboration with Agritecture’s Systems Engineer, Alberto Lopez.
Since volunteering with the NYC Agriculture Collective during graduate school, Sarah is now a board member of the Collective! She helps to spearhead communications to foster meaningful growth for the nonprofit organization.
What Hopes Does Sarah Have For The Future Of CEA?
With her interest in quickly helping the industry become more sustainable, Sarah hopes “to see more transparency and honesty in sustainability-related communications.” She shares that “there is a responsibility for fully educating consumers about CEA (and all aspects of it, not just the parts that sound and make operators look “good”). These communications ought to be transparent and substantiated with actual numbers.”
As part of the Agritecture team, Sarah hopes to keep connecting with like-minded sustainability enthusiasts and changemakers that can help drive sustainable food production. Reach out to Sarah to discuss your urban farming plans today: sarah@agritecture.com
