Aita is a Black and Asian mother and mixed-methods public health researcher who draws on years of experience as a grassroots organizer and Registered Nurse (RN) caring for predominantly Black patients (in two Washington D.C. Emergency Departments and in its largest Federally Qualified Health Center -- Howard University Hospital, The George Washington University Hospital, and Unity Health Care). She brings decades of skills and experience in program development, project management, administrative support, program implementation and evaluation, and community organizing. She has led and participated in several community projects, including post-Katrina rebuilding efforts in New Orleans, Louisiana, a long-term care health assessment in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands, fossil fuel divestment efforts at Princeton University, coordinating multidisciplinary care for chronically ill patients and survivors of intimate partner violence in Washington, D.C. She holds a BA in Psychology from Princeton University (with certificates in African-American Studies and Neuroscience), a Master of Public Health and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from The Johns Hopkins University (with certificates in Health Disparities and Health Communications), and is a PhD Candidate at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. With an extensive background in public health and nursing focused on historically marginalized populations, she is deeply committed to health equity, food sovereignty, and building systems and partnerships that enable intergenerational thriving. In 2016, as Clinical Program Manager for a pilot Transition of Care Program, she created and implemented a comprehensive hospital-to-home care transitions program at DC’s largest Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) modeled after the Healthcare Hotspotting program in Camden NJ, building partnerships across diverse stakeholders. She recruited, trained, and coordinated a team of Registered Nurses, Social Workers, and Community Health Workers who performed telephonic and in-person outreach at the hospital bedside, in patients’ homes, and at their various care settings with the goal of preventing hospital readmissions and increasing capacity for chronic disease self-management. She directed the implementation and evaluation of all aspects of the program and created its infrastructure, which is still being used for the care coordination work that the FQHC continues today. She has worked in various community health settings domestically and internationally, and understands the important role of a sustainable food system on the health and wellbeing of the planet and its people. She grew up eating vegetables from farmers markets in Taiwan, and started learning how to grow organic vegetables in 2018 through OurSpace’s community gardening & farming work while organizing fellow African-American homeschooling parents around growing food, and has a personal commitment to ensure that this generation of Black youth reconnects to the land and their history.