San Francisco / Oakland cohort
Betsy (she/her/hers) is a highly curious being, life-long learner, and lover of layers, lists, and adventure. She is the fourth daughter of Mario Rosales and Maria Avalos who settled in San Diego from Nayarit, Mexico. Betsy fundamentally believes that building deep and honest relationships – with the nourishing soil and land, with the wisdom-filled trees, with the creative insects, with the mysterious mushrooms, with each other – is a profound, radical, and soul-grounding way of loving and caring for each other and the world. She attributes these earth-grounding characteristics to her maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother who have showed her how to simultaneously respect and take care of the earth as She respects and takes care of us. Betsy has experience as an elementary science educator and a community nutrition educator and has a passion for teaching/sharing from a young age. In her spare time, Betsy can be found contemplating her existence, collecting practical skills and knowledge, climbing rocks large and small, biking, dancing, and enjoying a walk around the neighborhood. With the support of OEI, Betsy aspires to engage spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical health through food, movement, radical self-expression, and outdoor recreation while creating an avenue for marginalized communities to reclaim ourselves, culture, future, health, and well-being. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 2019 with intersectional interests in biology, ecology, human health, and food sovereignty.