Our Team

Sustainable Agriculture Leadership Team

Sustainable production is a demanding and rewarding practice. We have an interdisciplinary team of faculty and staff that collectively guide the direction of our research, education, production, and partnerships.

A smiling woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, wearing a colorful floral blouse, against a textured gray background.

Laura Livingston

Director of Sustainable Agriculture, Assistant Professor of Food Studies

Originally from southwestern Virginia, Laura attended Oberlin College for her Undergraduate degree, where she worked on farms and was a lead-composter in the Oberlin Student Cooperative Association. After graduating, Laura became an Agriculture Advisor in the Peace Corps, serving over two years in Ghana. Laura returned to the USA, working on an organic farm for one season before starting graduate school at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Laura received a Masters in Agroecology and a PhD in Environment and Resources. During her graduate program, she worked on participatory plant breeding projects with farmers and chefs, collaboratively built an organic farm manager apprenticeship program and evaluation tools, and worked with agricultural educational programs in Madison, Wisconsin and in Ghana. Laura brings these multitudes of experiences to her Eden Hall Farm.

A young woman with curly hair pulled up in a high puff, smiling at the camera, wearing a dark speckled top, standing against a textured beige wall.

Indira Ortiz

Farm Manager

Indira Ortiz has been at Eden Hall Farm as a Chatham Employee since 2019. Originally from Honduras, she holds a bachelor's in environmental and socioeconomic development and a master's degree in Agroforestry and Sustainable Agriculture from CATIE in Costa Rica. Her experience includes project management, organic crop production, integrated pest management, student training and supervision, experiential learning, and maple syrup production. 

Portrait of a man with dark hair, glasses, and a beard, wearing a blue plaid shirt against a gray background.

Chris Murakami

Associate Professor of Agroecology

Chris has worked in school gardens and urban farms in Los Angeles, CA, and Columbia, MO, before moving to the Pittsburgh area. His PhD research focused on designing learning around authentic, real-time decision making contexts in sustainable agriculture education. He has applied this approach to research on teaching and learning to the design of garden and farm based learning for the Eden Hall Farm in the Basic Agroecology and Growing Sustainably Lab courses. Chris focuses on biologically intensive production of vegetables and fruits (especially alliums) and engages with urban farmers in the Pittsburgh area.

A woman with curly dark hair, glasses, and hoop earrings, smiling, wearing a blue blouse, posed against a gray mottled background.

Nadine Lehrer

Associate Professor of Food Studies

Nadine’s farm experience evolved from backyard tomatoes in the Northeast to urban garden management during college, to seasonal work on a diversified vegetable CSA in Illinois, an educational farm with rare breeds of livestock in Maine, and a beef cattle/agroforestry operation in Minnesota. Nadine has worked too as an arborist (with trees) in New York City, interned with a damselfly biologist in Panama, and did research alongside small-scale farmers in Peru. Her PhD focused on U.S. agricultural policy, and she teaches a range of courses at Chatham including ones that focus on dairy and meat production. She currently raises small numbers of goats, sheep, chickens, and cows at home with family. Nadine’s interactions with Eden Hall farm mostly center around course visits and activities.

A woman with gray hair and glasses

Alice Julier

Director of CRAFT, Professor of Food Studies

Alice Julier is a professor and the founding program director of the Food Studies program at Chatham.  She is also the Director of CRAFT, the Center for Regional Agriculture, Food, and Transformation which offers research, training, and food system support for food businesses, organizations, and farms.  She was hired in 2009 when Chatham first took stewardship of Eden Hall and during her interview, an eco-feminist Shakespeare professor, a theater arts professor, a microbiologist, and a crop scientist showed her the gardens they worked and sent her home with produce and she was hooked.  Over the last fifteen years, she has spent some summers in the ADG doing work-and-pick, some in the kitchen doing canning and food preservation, some foraging blackberries and mushrooms, and some just watching and supporting everyone’s work.

A young woman with long wavy hair smiling outdoors with green trees in the background.

Rebecca Nathan

Apiary Manager 

Rebecca Nathan, MAFS ’22, has been working in the Eden Hall Apiary since 2021 when she first started as an intern. She has helped to establish the apiary beyond just working in the hives to include expanded honey sales, class programming, and workshops at Eden Hall and Shadyside campuses, including Pollinator Week at the beginning of April. You can see pictures from Rebecca’s thesis project, Sustainable Agriculture Photography: A Book Proposal, around the Lodge that incorporates pictures of bees from the EH Apiary! Rebecca hopes to continue apiary education throughout each season for Chatham undergrads and grad students to enhance their experience-based learning.

Student Leaders

  • A smiling person with short hair wearing green sunglasses and a tie-dye shirt, taking a selfie with a small black and white dog wearing a green harness. They are outside near a truck with plants in the truck bed, and trees and a blue sky in the background.

    Holly Tyson

    Holly Tyson hails from Kennett Square, PA, the Mushroom Capital of the World, which explains why she is like mycelium running in every direction, with interests spanning from A (asparagus) to Z (zinnias)! She is completing her Masters in Sustainability with a focus on agritourism and radical hospitality.  Holly is thankful to have had her dog (shown here) accompany her during her summer 2024 internship on the farm, during which Piglet (or "Pigaletta" to those who know and love him) served as self-appointed "Groundhog Control Captain".

  • A young woman outdoors with blond hair smiling, wearing a dark jacket and a patterned scarf around her neck, with a blurred background of buildings and sky.

    Lindsey Disler

    Lindsey serves as the Graduate Assistant managing the Agroecology Demonstration Garden at Eden Hall Farm, where she focuses on perennial polyculture systems, tree crop production, and specialty crops. Her work combines hands-on farming with academic research on cooperative agricultural models that promote both ecological health and equitable food systems. Building on her previous experience running a CSA program, Lindsey is particularly passionate about creating sustainable pathways through agroecological practices and collective approaches that address barriers facing young farmers.

  • A young man with glasses and curly hair smiling and standing in front of a lush green leafy background, wearing a pink t-shirt that says 'Pittsburgh Urban Farm Tour'.

    Bernard Sekey

    For Bernard, Eden Hall Farm is his happy place away from his home country, Ghana, where he works as an Organic Agriculture Apprentice and Research & Education Assistant. He is deeply involved in farm operations, from seeding and harvesting to implementing integrated pest management practices and analyzing farm data to support decision-making. Bernard also develops sustainability metrics, creates reports showcasing the farm’s achievements, and research grant opportunities, including efforts to secure the farm’s first USDA GAP certification. Committed to adding value, he continuously contributes to the farm’s growth through research and sustainability initiatives.

  • A woman with long light brown hair, wearing large black glasses, a mustard-colored shirt, and green earrings, smiling in front of a plain beige wall.

    Clarissa Klostermann

    Clarissa’s role with the farm team happens in the learning kitchen on campus. Her projects have included experimenting with a number of processing techniques (drying, smoking, fermenting, freezing), collaborating with classes and other students in the kitchen or at the campus bread oven, and preparing community meals. Clarissa has a lot of flexibility in this unique position and enjoys the variety of experiences, from leading a class on making a from-scratch pumpkin pie to expanding her repertoire on how to utilize swiss chard to preparing lunch for the larger farm team highlighting the produce they've just harvested.

See our team in action

A young woman and a man working outdoors on a wooden table, preparing or harvesting vegetables, with a house wall and windows in the background.
Two women planting and holding plants in a greenhouse filled with various green plants and flowers, with gardening tools and a black bucket in the foreground.
A woman with glasses and a bun hairstyle holding a framed honeycomb frame, wearing a beige 'Friends Not Foes' t-shirt, using a yellow tool to scrape honey, in a room with light-colored walls and a whiteboard.
A woman in a beekeeping suit smiling and giving two thumbs up outdoors near a large tree surrounded by grass and greenery.
Person planting seeds in soil inside a black container, with a seedling tray nearby, in a greenhouse or indoor gardening space.