Jul 18, 2022
Isabelle at the Sun Gate overlooking Macchu Picchu after hiking the Inca Trail. Her biggest takeaway: learning about the ecological floors and microclimates that the Incas created within the Sacred Valley to grow a variety of crops.
Editor’s Note: Get to know the amazing team at Agritecture! This interview features Isabelle Dom, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Agritecture Consulting.
Meet Agritecture’s newest team member: Isabelle Dom!
Texas land use change in acres used for cropland, grazing land, wildlife management, timber, and other from 1997 to 2017; Chart sourced from Texas Land Trends, a publication of Texas A&M
Isabelle is a recent addition to the Agritecture family, joining the marketing department in May 2022. While she is a newcommer to the industry, her interest in sustainability, particularly in the urban context, has been constant throughout her life.
Isabelle currently resides in her hometown of Houston, Texas. Her experience growing up in the fourth-largest city in the U.S. (ranked amongst the worst in terms of sprawl) coupled with her routine visits to her grandparents’ remote, hill country home helped drive this passion.
“Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents who live on 38 acres northwest of San Antonio. My grandmother worked professionally as a site surveyor and would survey potential building sites for rare and/or endangered plant species. Through this interest of hers, she developed in me a sense of wonderment and appreciation for the natural world,” shares Isabelle.
As she continued to visit her grandparents year after year, Isabelle witnessed firsthand “the loss of natural landscapes as the city of San Antonio sprawled and some of the rolling hills became subject to quarries.” To better contextualize this issue, according to Texas A&M, “between 1982 and 2010, Texas lost 4.1 million acres of working lands to urban uses.”
While a glum reality of the industrializing world, this transformation cemented Isabelle’s curiosity into the environmental impacts of human behavior.
Isabelle narrowed in on the effects of urban planning, particularly as it relates to food security, during her undergraduate studies at Randolph College.
As part of her Global Studies degree, Isabelle explored the intersection of economics and sustainability, and her thesis “discussed how urban planning can exacerbate social inequities.”
Isabelle and her cohort presenting their findings at the 2011 Virginia Association of Economists Conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
A precursor to this investigation, Isabelle coauthored a case study on food deserts as part of an Economics of Food & Sustainability course. By using a slightly expanded version of the 2008 U.S. Farm Bill definition of “food desert,” Isabelle and her cohort tested the hypothesis that downtown Lynchburg, Virginia, qualified as a food desert. “To test this hypothesis, my cohort collected data on food prices and shelf allocation percentages by personally visiting the convenience and grocery stores located closest to the downtown area. After collecting this data, analyzing it, and writing this case study, we shared our findings with the Mayor and the Office of Urban Planning. We were even invited to present at the 2011 Virginia Association of Economists Conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. It was through this research that I began to understand the collective ramifications of limited access to food.”
Fun fact: Isabelle’s passion for urban sustainability is shared with a love for the arts! She earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance at Randolph College, and Master of Arts in Arts Leadership from the University of Houston.
Spending the past ten years of her career in the nonprofit world, specifically in performing arts and education, Isabelle brings with her experience in brand management, content marketing, and communications stretching across multiple industries.
Isabelle leading a panel discussion on a collaborative project between Houston Ballet, Menil Collection, and the Cunningham Trust
She shares that “as the Senior Digital Marketing Manager, I get to hone a lot of skills. Beyond the in-house marketing responsibilities, I also get to execute work for our marketing clients and soon we will focus our attention on the marketing strategy for Agritecture Designer. Working within Agritecture’s marketing department exposes you to many sides of the marketing world and across multiple industries. It’s a fortunate place to be.”
As was the case with this role, Isabelle explains that “of the positions I’ve held in my career, half of them have been newly created and within well-established institutions. I am someone who can comfortably occupy a gray space, create a pathway forward, and effect positive change.”
When asked where she sees herself being able to contribute to the CEA sector, Isabelle added that “my experience [as described above] runs parallel to the sector - a relatively new field that is finding new solutions in a long-standing industry. The ability to work within that type of space plus my years of experience in executing marketing campaigns and leading brand development, I hope, will be seen as an asset and ultimately lead to a real contribution. But I’m just getting started, so fingers crossed!”
With her current role and her vision for where the industry will be in 5 years, Isabelle is interested in the act of marketing sustainability.
Isabelle showing off her Thai and Genovese basil harvest from her backyard herb and vegetable garden.
“As we all know, consumers are increasingly interested in patroning businesses that practice some level of environmental responsibility, and as businesses try to respond to this consumer demand, we have seen a lot of positive changes,” shares Isabelle.
However, a negative side effect of this change “has been the development of greenwashing which has casted doubt on the integrity of sustainable pursuits.” This greenwashing is made evident in the CEA industry through Agritecture & WayBeyond’s 2021 Global CEA Census that found a shocking 70% of respondents (CEA growers) to believe that the industry is susceptible to excessive greenwashing.
Isabelle adds that “we now not only need to course correct, but we also need to develop a standard of best practices to help prevent future entrepreneurs from unknowingly committing greenwashing - and that is what I hope to see grow in the next 5 years, and I believe Agritecture is positioned perfectly to ensure it does.”
To help dispel greenwashing and support entrepreneurs in this course correction, Agritecture has launched a Sustainability Communications Guide. This guide enables consumers to more effectively interpret sustainability-related claims in the CEA industry, and helps operators communicate about sustainability in a more effective and honest way. Download your copy!
