Casey Greenleaf
Cultural Anthropology
Graduated in 2020
Casey Greenleaf grew up in Brattleboro, Vermont. She transferred to Northeastern from Skidmore College during her second-year; although she enjoyed the small liberal arts school environment, she believed Northeastern would provide her the freedom to mix and match courses and create the educational experience she was looking for. Casey has a lot of interests and didn’t always plan to study Cultural Anthropology. She started at NU as an Environmental Science major, switched to Political Science, and switched again to English. She finally settled on Cultural Anthropology because she found that it addressed the core desire at the root of all her interests—understanding the human condition.
Casey took “Global Markets and Local Cultures'' with the late Professor Jeffrey Juris. After traveling, she saw how the coursework mirrored reality, and knew her education was preparing her for the world.
Casey went on a DOC to Argentina and Uruguay. She wanted to become fluent in Spanish, and she did become highly proficient while living in Buenos Aires and visiting the glaciers of the Patagonia region.
Casey did her first co-op at the Museum of Fine Arts as a Community Arts program assistant. She gained valuable hands-on experience assisting in arts classes for the local communities.
Casey joined the Sociology & Anthropology Student Association during her third year. It allowed her to get to know her fellow students and mirrored the small school experience she loved.
Casey studied abroad in Nepal for her capstone thesis. She lived alone for a month while she researched and wrote about the lived experience of climate change in the lower Himalayas.
Casey joined the Sunrise Movement, an environmental group that organizes protests urging political action for climate justice issues. With them, she truly felt like a part of the local Boston community.
Casey worked for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, founded by Professor Sarah Wylie. She produced promotional videos, developed a virtual research event, wrote event programming, and more.
Casey now works as Community Coordinator with Creative Mornings, an organization hosting monthly event series for creative communities. Casey onboards new volunteers, and creates series events.
“It was the intermodality of Northeastern that was really attractive to me. When I came here, that idea was a very exciting thing for me: the potential that I could do so much, that there were so many opportunities open for me like co-ops and studying abroad. That idea ended up being very true — as true as I thought it would be, it was even truer.”
