I'm extremely pleased to welcome Leila Pinchot to the staff of The American Chestnut Foundation. Leila is a graduate student at the Global Institute of Sustainable Forestry at Yale University, and while continuing her studies, has agreed to concurrently perform the function of New England Regional Science Coordinator for TACF. While she'll be working with State Chapters throughout New England, Connecticut will be her home. I asked Leila to forward a biography and this is what she sent.
I have always enjoyed being outside in nature. As a little girl I spent summers in eastern Pennsylvania, where my sister and I would camp, fish and hunt for edible plants. In high school my father told my sister and I about the American chestnut and the blight and showed us some sprouts growing in PA. As many people are, I was drawn to the chestnut story. Over winter break of my senior year at Oberlin College, I volunteered for Dr. Sandra Anagnostakis at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. The month long internship turned into a summer job, where I learned how to grow, pollinate, and inoculate chestnuts, and to grow chestnut blight and to convert blight fungus with hypovirulence. After working for Dr. Anagnostakis, I helped established an American chestnut orchard at the Milford Experimental Forest in PA. I am currently a student at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. I am very excited to join the American Chestnut Foundation as the New England regional Science Coordinator. Feel free to contact me at gro.fca@alieL.
Leila Pinchot – New England Region Science Coordinator
Leila Pinchot dressed for work
[click on photo to enlarge](photographer unknown)
