Uploaded December 2022 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
Women Move Mountains! The Clark Family School of Environment and Sustainability celebrates International Mountain Day with presentations from Mountain Women across the globe.
Opening by our Dean, Dr. John Hausdoerffer.
Introduction of topic by Gillian (Steininger) Bauer, a recent graduate from Western Colorado University's Master of Environmental Management. For her graduate work, she focused on Mountain Women across North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. She compiled their stories in a podcast titled Mountain Women of the World.
1. Sofía Lana, from Mar del Plata, Argentina, is a PhD Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at UC San Diego, studying what melting glaciers produce in the Central and Tropical Andes. Sofía has a B.A. in International Relations (Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires) and an M.A. in Latin American Studies (UC San Diego). Her previous research centered on gendered and sexual violence in prisons in Ecuador and clandestine detention centers in Chile.
2. Bibiana Bautista Gaytan is from Oaxaca, Mexico. She is Mixteca and proudly speaks, writes, and understands her indigenous language. She works with Organizacion de Mujeres Milenarias, an organization dedicated to the cultivation, care, and traditional use of agave pulquero for the resilience of her community.
3. Upasna Thakur and Swati Kukreti are both from Uttarakhand, India. They both earned their Bachelors of Science in Forestry and Natural Resources as well as their MS in Environmental Science from Doon University. They both have extensive field training in forestry, herbal health, and nursery management.
4. Alexandra Howard is a PhD candidate in the Mountain Bat Lab at the University of the Free State in South Africa studying ecosystem services of bats in local apple fruit farms. Alex's research aims to calculate the socio-economic value of the pest control services provided by insectivorous bat species in agroecosystems by combining acoustic monitoring, molecular diet analysis, stakeholder perceptions and agricultural data. As part of the Afromontane Research Unit, Alex is also the lab manager for the "BioBlitz" biodiversity surveys which are conducted in the Drakensberg Mountains in collaboration with over 35 researchers and students from institutions across southern Africa as a multi-disciplinary team investigating social-ecological resilience projects for local communities living in the mountains.
The panel is concluded with insights from Patricia (Pato) Breuer Moreno, co-founder of Mujeres a la Cumbre and the Mountain Women of the World Network, who released their first publication today (Dec 9th!).
Women Move Mountains! The Clark Family School of Environment and Sustainability celebrates International Mountain Day with presentations from Mountain Women across the globe.
Opening by our Dean, Dr. John Hausdoerffer.
Introduction of topic by Gillian (Steininger) Bauer, a recent graduate from Western Colorado University's Master of Environmental Management. For her graduate work, she focused on Mountain Women across North America, Central America, and the Caribbean. She compiled their stories in a podcast titled Mountain Women of the World.
1. Sofía Lana, from Mar del Plata, Argentina, is a PhD Candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at UC San Diego, studying what melting glaciers produce in the Central and Tropical Andes. Sofía has a B.A. in International Relations (Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires) and an M.A. in Latin American Studies (UC San Diego). Her previous research centered on gendered and sexual violence in prisons in Ecuador and clandestine detention centers in Chile.
2. Bibiana Bautista Gaytan is from Oaxaca, Mexico. She is Mixteca and proudly speaks, writes, and understands her indigenous language. She works with Organizacion de Mujeres Milenarias, an organization dedicated to the cultivation, care, and traditional use of agave pulquero for the resilience of her community.
3. Upasna Thakur and Swati Kukreti are both from Uttarakhand, India. They both earned their Bachelors of Science in Forestry and Natural Resources as well as their MS in Environmental Science from Doon University. They both have extensive field training in forestry, herbal health, and nursery management.
4. Alexandra Howard is a PhD candidate in the Mountain Bat Lab at the University of the Free State in South Africa studying ecosystem services of bats in local apple fruit farms. Alex's research aims to calculate the socio-economic value of the pest control services provided by insectivorous bat species in agroecosystems by combining acoustic monitoring, molecular diet analysis, stakeholder perceptions and agricultural data. As part of the Afromontane Research Unit, Alex is also the lab manager for the "BioBlitz" biodiversity surveys which are conducted in the Drakensberg Mountains in collaboration with over 35 researchers and students from institutions across southern Africa as a multi-disciplinary team investigating social-ecological resilience projects for local communities living in the mountains.
The panel is concluded with insights from Patricia (Pato) Breuer Moreno, co-founder of Mujeres a la Cumbre and the Mountain Women of the World Network, who released their first publication today (Dec 9th!).
