Diversity Digest Spotlight - Bruins in Sustainability: The Intersectional Environmentalism of Nisha Bansal '20

Cory Rosas ’16, Director for UCLA Alumni Diversity Programs & Initiatives (DPI) connected with recent graduate and featured speaker for DPI’s upcoming program Mixin’ It Up: Empowering Communities for a Sustainable Tomorrow, a program that will bring alumni and students together to engage in conversation around intersectionality and sustainability inspired by the 2023-24 UCLA Common Experience selection “Intersectional Environmentalist,” to learn more about her experience at UCLA and how intersectionality has impacted her work in, and passion for, sustainability.

isha Bansal is a recent graduate who majored in environmental science and public affairs at UCLA where she worked for UCLA Housing’s sustainability team as a sustainability associate on The Hill and was involved with the Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) facilities commission focused on underutilized campus spaces. Following graduation, Bansal began working as an environmental science consultant with a private company and has recently transitioned to working with Partnership for Growth LA (PFGLA), an intersectional community development corporation that seeks to address issues such as food access, job and economic security, primary education support, and workforce development in a manner that builds community ownership.

Bansal credits her South Asian background as inspiration for her investment and interest in environmental issues from a young age, “My parents shaped a lot of my early environmental and conservationist thinking. They immigrated to the United States from India with very little, which instilled in me the importance of making the best use of our resources. Culturally, we don’t always think of it as being environmentally conscious, it’s more so about embodying a way of living that happens to be more connected to nature. As a kid, my mom was always growing fruits and vegetables in our backyard, and family road trips to national parks were a summer staple.”

Seeing connections between her own South Asian culture, particularly as it relates to food and the community built around food, and her coursework at UCLA drove her to seek out professional opportunities in sustainable food systems. As the program manager for Freedom Farms, a program tasked with creating a network of local urban farms to offer more food access and healthy food focused education to Los Angeles community members, particularly South and West LA community members experiencing food insecurity, Bansal has been able to fulfill her passion for sustainable food systems while supporting local communities.

"The goal of Freedom Farms is to establish 37 urban farms or community gardens in the city of LA in the next 3 years. I am interested in how we can make our food systems more local and community-centric, so that we can engage the folks in our city who have historically lacked access to fresh produce and to equitable, sustainable spaces like this.”

A recent demographic profile conducted by the City of Los Angeles Department of City Planning tells us that South LA is a multicultural community with 64 percent of residents identifying as Hispanic or Latino and 25 percent identifying as Black or African American. South LA is also a known food desert, places where there is a lack of access to fresh foods and a lack of supermarkets available to serve the surrounding population, making the work of Freedom Farms critical in providing access to fresh produce.

“My goal is to establish a program that is self-sustaining and can be replicated across other cities. I’m looking forward to the impact that this program will have, not just in terms of improving food access, but also in shifting perspectives around food sovereignty and what it means to be connected to what’s on your plate.”

Bansal will be a featured speaker for UCLA Alumni Diversity Programs & Initiatives’ upcoming program Mixin’ It Up: Empowering Communities for a Sustainable Tomorrow, a program that will bring alumni and students together to engage in conversation around intersectionality and sustainability inspired by the 2023-24 UCLA Common Experience selection “Intersectional Environmentalist.”

You can learn more about Mixin’ It Up and other Diversity Programs & Initiatives signature programs by visiting our website.