HMI is excited to announce our newest Certified Educator, Angela Boudro. Angela resides in Medford, Oregon and participated in HMI's Western Sustainable Agriculture, Research, and Education (WSARE) Distance Learning for Agricultural Education program. After completing that work, she went on to complete HMI's Certified Educator Training Program on a fellowship. She has been instrumental in HMI's ability to develop programming in the Medford area and providing training in whole farm/ranch business planning and land planning for beginning farmers and ranchers and producers transitioning to improved stewardship of their land. Angie has worked in agriculture her entire life and has experience on small and large farms with a wide variety of animals, markets and clients. She earned her B.S. in Animal Science and Agricultural Communications at Purdue University and an M.S. in Animal Science at UC Davis. She previously owned and operated a brush control business using goats, specializing in the management of invasive plants and fuels reduction. She and her husband also started an aquaponics-based farm. Angie is passionate about regenerative agriculture and works as an independent contractor and consultant, where she contracts with various agencies and individuals, consults with private landowners, teaches a variety of courses for numerous organizations. Angie was awarded a partial scholarship to complete the Certified Educator Training Program. When we asked her why she wanted to become a Certified Educator, she said: "I believe Holistic Management can be a powerful tool in people’s lives. I love teaching and love working with people, especially farmers and ranchers, and I want to continually develop my skills to be able to reach and motivate more people to be successful. I want to help producers stay on the land and create families and businesses that build their communities and encourages their kids to stay and keeps the land in production for the myriad of benefits that comes from that." "It was wonderful to be able to focus on learning the material – because that takes a lot of time and energy! There is so much to learn! It is one of the reasons I appreciate this training; although it did take over two years to complete the entire program, we went from one module to another so there was constant exposure to Holistic Management. I’ve done courses in the past then came home and not had contact with anyone practicing or anything to continue to jog my memory about it, so this training helped result in a change of thinking that hadn’t happened with earlier single-course trainings." "There are so many opportunities to use this information. Holistic Management is about better decision making, and everyone can benefit from better decisions! However, I expect to mostly work with the farming and ranching community. That being said, I see a huge need to develop curriculum to work with young people. We make some of the biggest decisions in our life before we have much life experience, and many of those decisions impact us for the rest of our life. Yet we don’t teach decision making skills, so that would be a tough but rewarding group to work with. There are four colleges within driving distance of my home so there are opportunities to teach HM there. I’m very excited to be a Certified Educator and am looking forward to pursuing these opportunities!" Welcome, Angie!