Meet Mary Hannah

Hi there! My name is Mary Hannah Smith, and I’m the Director of Sustainability initiatives for FlashFood!

I’ve been travelling the world for the past eight months and recently returned to Tempe, only to be amazed at all of the incredible accomplishments that the rest of the FlashFood team have been able to achieve while I was gone. More specifically, I spent last spring semester in Dakar, Senegal, studying French and learning Wolof. Here I am in the back of a pickup truck (I’m the one in the huge and sunglasses, holding a camera), preparing for a very uncomfortable 70km drive through the Sahel, to reach the Great Green Wall. Senegal was a great experience, except for the malaria, which I know is not incredibly descriptive but it would be impossible to describe all of my feelings about that trip in one blog post. Unfortunately, I had to leave Dakar in late May, so I could attend a summer program in Bangkok, Thailand (which meant that I only spent 36 hours in Phoenix). In Thailand, I studied urban planning and sustainability, and was fortunate enough to earn an internship at DASTA, which stands for Designated Areas for Sustainable Tourism. I loved my work and my co-workers, and was very sad to have to go home. If you are still curious about my experiences in Thailand and Senegal, please visit my travel blog.

I am happy to be back in Phoenix, but not so happy to be back in school. I have two more semesters left at ASU before I earn a B.S. in Sustainability, and a B.A. in Global Studies. Graduating should be pretty neat, but I’m not sure if I’ll survive writing my senior thesis!

Anyways, I’m so excited to be back with the FlashFood team and am hoping to help out as much as I can this semester. Since our project is still getting off the ground, we’d love to get your feedback (comments, criticisms, suggestions, ramblings, etc) on FlashFood and on food waste in general, so please send us your thoughts either here, through email, or via any of our social media outlets.

Thanks for reading,

–MH