Student Spotlight: Bella Wood
Bella Wood, MPA ‘26 with her grandparents
What was your background before starting the MPA program at the Policy School in Fall 2024?
I was born and raised in Wyoming. My mom is a fourth-grade teacher and my dad works for Habitat for Humanity in Jackson. I am also a ninth-generation cattle rancher in New Mexico. My grandparents, who are both in their 80s, currently steward 14,000 acres of our ranch, Ute Creek Cattle Company, in northeastern New Mexico. Just to understand the true rurality of this place, it has a population of four and is located 67 miles away from nearest gallon of milk.
What connection did you have to the East Coast?
My parents actually met in Boston although my dad was raised in East Africa and my mom in Wyoming. During my childhood, we traveled quite a bit to visit family abroad and we lived in Argentina for six months. Because of this, I thought I would join the foreign service. When it came time to choose a college, I picked Fordham University. No one from Wyoming had gone there for 12 years and I was craving some anonymity. I ended up staying in New York until I was 25.
How did your undergraduate experience shape your career trajectory?
At Fordham I majored in Political Science and Humanitarian Studies and spent time studying in Spain. I worked on state senate campaigns throughout college and quickly realized I wasn’t loving the campaign side of politics. I got my first glimpse into the world of policy when I became one of three undergraduates involved in the Fordham Reimagine Higher Ed project. I started analyzing our education system, and after graduating in 2020, amid the pandemic, I knew I wanted to dive into the education system.
What roles did you take on following graduation?
After college I ran the U.S. and youth side of Global Arts Corps, an arts organization that uses theatre and the rehearsal process to delve into conflict resolution. I was hired my senior year as the Director of Youth Engagement because at that time they were shifting their priorities from working with adults to children and needed to develop the process for doing this. I ended up working there for four years and I loved it.
How did your work in the arts push you in a new direction?
I had known I wanted to go into education policy, and to do that effectively, I knew I needed to spend time in the classroom. With a fourth-grade teacher for a mom, I knew how hard teachers work. I was quite sure I would not be a teacher as my career, but I also knew I needed some direct experience to understand what the needs of the sector were–at least, some of the needs. My work with artists and life in New York pushed me to look at teaching through a different lens, and my experience as a rancher shaped my views tremendously when it came to my students and the curriculum.
How did your teaching experience lead you to your current path?
I taught in an elementary school online during the pandemic and then in-person the next year at a charter school in Brooklyn. Like many teachers across the country, I found that my students were behind in basic skills post-pandemic. Therefore, there was tremendous focus placed on reading and math at the expense of teaching science. My students, especially the girls, had no ideas about the opportunities that exist for them in STEM fields. So, in any way that I could, I encouraged those interests and got them thinking about the myriad opportunities that exist in STEM, especially when we think about the field more broadly. The rancher in me realized we were not creating equitable pathways to an industry that is ripe for possibility: agriculture. I know that whatever a child’s interest, there is a space for them in ag. and if we want to address our food and climate challenges, we need to close that gap as soon as possible.
What are some of the challenges currently facing the ranching and agriculture sectors?
As a society, many of us living in cities are removed from our food system and treat producers with a bit of an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality. Because of this, small and mid-size farmers, often on legacy operations, aren’t protected (or even talked about), so there are fewer and fewer of them. The average rancher today is 58 years old, and I’ll tell you, that number is increasing each year. We desperately need young people to bring fresh ideas and energy, but we also need to capture the wisdom and tacit knowledge of the older generations that have worked the land. Recognizing this need, and the unique opportunity I had to address it, I started Ranch Lab.
Ranch Lab aims to answer this question: How can we include younger generations in policy that affects them and is inclusive of their skills, while respecting the wisdom older generations have for us? We want to create a pipeline to help young people get involved in whatever way they want to be; if you want to do computer science, there’s a place for you in ag., math majors- welcome, fashion designers- we need you too, and anyone else! There are endless opportunities in the ag. space, and to capitalize on those effectively we to gain as much wisdom as possible from our sages.
How have your woven your family legacy into your work?
We are in the process of making the ranch into a laboratory and establishing a model to do this elsewhere. When my grandparents moved back to my grandmother’s ranch 23 years ago after 40 years in Cheyenne, it was in bad shape. The soil was degraded, and a water-sucking invasive species called salt cedar had dried up the ten miles of Ute Creek that run through the ranch. My grandparents’ vision was to create a ranch that was environmentally sustainable for the environment, and therefore sustainable for the family. So, they started educating themselves on regenerative and innovative practices, welcoming ideas from environmental organizations and government programs, learning about water conservation, composting, rotational grazing, and holistic management. My grandparents focus on conservation as a mechanism for profit was not all that common when they began, but it was necessary for the ranch to have what I call, “successful succession.”
I realized my goal was to focus on succession planning, just on a national scale. If we want to address the existential threats to our world, we need to engage young people in the policy that will affect them, as opposed to imposing it upon them. We need their unique skills to address these challenges, because without young professionals, we are just wasting time.
What was the impact of the sustainable approach your grandparents adopted?
The impact that a conservation mindset has is obvious above and below the land. I like to touch on three key metrics of success that we have observed over 23 years. The first thing we experimented with was rotational grazing, which mimics the bison herds that existed on this land. Twenty-three years ago, the ranch had four pastures on 14,000 acres of land. Cattle were moved rarely, and soil monitoring was nonexistent. My grandparents sectioned the ranch into 29 pastures and started time-managed grazing. This allows cattle to do the “poop and stomp,” which is critical for soil health. Next, we addressed water conservation. We covered our 20-foot livestock tanks with shade balls, preventing evaporation. Our data proved successful: a decrease in 91 percent of evaporation saving 16,000 gallons of water per tank, per year. Over the last 10 years this innovation has saved approximately 2.4 million gallons of underground water. Finally, one of our critical guidepostsis our birds. In 2000, the bird species count at the ranch was 17; in 2022, the count was 112. We know that “what’s good for the bird, is good for the herd” and we see that success each day. A lot of people thought my grandparents were nuts for switching up their practices like this, but when you can measure your success effectively and respond to data, it’s easy to prove the benefits of conservation practices. While they did this for their family and not for recognition, they won the first New Mexico Aldo Leopold Conservation Award in 2021 for the transformation they brought about. They are featured in a video you can watch here.
When you left New York to live on the ranch for a time, what were your takeaways?
I left New York because I knew that someone had to mine the memories and wisdom my grandparents hold regarding this ranch. I want my children to be the 10th generation to steward this land, and to do that, I need to know more. I learned we must focus on protecting the lungs of our nation: grasslands. This requires effective ruminant management and a commitment to restoring habitat. Land stewardship on working lands is not for the faint of heart; it’s a tremendous responsibility, that is a tremendous opportunity when done correctly.
I reframed my life at 23 years old to accept the responsibility I have for the incredible opportunity I have been given. This responsibility falls on individuals, but we need strong policy that will make this happen. The U.S. government must protect farmers and ranchers who want to do the right thing for the environment and their communities. Right now, it’s just too expensive to do things right but it doesn’t have to be. We need to incentivize experimentation and innovation if we are going to make things better for future generations. My grandmother’s favorite quote says that “we don’t own the land, we borrow it from our children.” And mine is a Barbara Kingsolver quote in the book Letters to a Young Farmer: “You’ll meet long-timers at conferences, and if you’re lucky, in your own neighborhood. Even if some of these old-schoolers have approaches that strike you as outmoded, they stayed on the land when everyone else was leaving it, and for this they deserve respect.” The intersection of these two quotes is where my work lies.
What led you to the MPA program at the Policy School?
I knew that, to accomplish what I want to do, I needed more hard skills, more guidance, and more connections. The MPA program is teaching me how to effectively analyze the pathways of change and understand who needs to be part of the equation. And Northeastern has given me the flexibility to balance school and work. I love my projects and I did not want to stop working. Right now, I have two major projects going on in South Texas—one based on community policy and one on institutional food procurement. I’m also working on building a multinational youth council based in Colorado. And I continue to run Ranch Lab, but sometimes Ranch Lab runs me!
How and where do you envision applying your skills once you finish your MPA?
I can imagine ending up in either D.C. or San Francisco. There are fascinating new ways of using capital to support regeneration and conservation, and I want to dig more into that. Doing it effectively will require people who can translate the needs of land stewards to policymakers. If we can figure out how to leverage everyone’s knowledge—including indigenous expertise in land stewardship—things will improve. Ultimately, I would love the opportunity to scale successful models internationally.
What have you found more valuable about your Policy School experience?
I love that everyone at the Policy School is so actively pursuing their passion. Professors aren’t just lecturing at you. Sitting in my Techniques of Policy Analysis class with Prof. Kim Lucas this semester, I sometimes can’t even take notes because the whole class is so engaged. Truthfully, I could have acquired the hard skills I want anywhere but there is so much going on here, across the university and the world. Northeastern is a place that truly makes it possible to translate good ideas into reality; it is the school of “yes!”
