Leona Davis leads a new initiative, in partnership with the Graduate College, to offer an interdisciplinary MS in Resilience Practice, as well as several graduate certificates in environmental and community resilience. Leona’s professional journey includes teaching in K-12 schools, designing and building water harvesting systems, managing community food system programs at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, and helping to build and coordinate AIR’s Earth Grant program.

Leona’s areas of interest include environmental leadership education, culturally responsive pedagogy, equitable and accessible program design, and participatory processes of all kinds. Her master’s thesis research developed recommendations for designing citizen science projects specifically to recruit and support underrepresented participants. Her research has been published in Environmental Health Perspectives, Citizen Science Theory and Practice, and International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.