Anthropology M.A., 2010

As executive director of LEAP, a nonprofit organization dedicated to local food access and equity around Roanoke, Virginia, Maureen McNamara Best’s work requires fluency and familiarity with agriculture, economics, health, policy, and the environment – so it’s a good thing she studied anthropology, she says.  

“I think a lot about how you can use what you’ve learned to influence policy, how other people think about things, or how to provide a different perspective,” McNamara Best says. “Anthropological framing is so important to make sure we don’t get disconnected from the people. 

McNamara Best completed an Anthropology master’s at CSU (M.A. 2010), working with Professor Emerita Kate Browne and focused on the economic viability of farmers in Northern Colorado. Her thesis combined participant observation, interviews, and other research to examine the impacts and challenges of building and supporting a local food system within state, regional, national, and global food systems. The experience was a sort of tasting menu for the executive director position with LEAP when she started in 2013. During the pandemic, she also earned a Master’s of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. 

“Through my MPH, I gained technical knowledge and a new understanding of the policy layer, but the framing and the core of my work was and continues to be rooted in anthropology.“ 

Our department spoke with McNamara Best about her job and how anthropology is the table-setter for careers working on food systems and policy. 

Q&A with Maureen McNamara Best

Tell us more about what LEAP does and what you do in your job. 

LEAP is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit started in 2009, run by volunteers. I became the first paid director in 2013. We really look at how to connect farmers and consumers and how to build more equitable and resilient local food systems. Our focus is largely on the Roanoke region, which is in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. 

LEAP runs a number of programs to nurture food and community – to help support the economic viability of local farmers and to make affordable, equitable access to food possible. Our programs include a mobile farmers market, two fixed-site farmers markets, nutrition incentives, a food hub, a farm-share program, a retail store, community gardens, and a processing kitchen to decrease food waste. Over the years, we have piloted, evaluated and modified a lot of programs and ideas – always making sure that what we offer aligns with community needs and that they also makes sense operationally.

We take a food-systems approach to looking at food and community. We strive to build and support flexibility and redundancy so that we can collectively have more resilient local and regional food systems and policy. 

In what ways has studying anthropology helped you be a good executive director and nonprofit leader? 

With anthropology, we employ a lens that seeks to understand lived experiences and the unintended consequences of policies and systems – and to not get too far removed from the people and communities affected. I try to apply that thinking when working with people and communities and within the organization.  

I think anthropology is really systems thinking. As society and structures get more complex, the anthropology skillset – to look at challenges from different perspectives and being able to approach and have conversations with people from different cultures – is so helpful.  

I often re-center in what I see as a central tenet of anthropology: the importance of nuance and that there is no one right answer, no single solution. I think it’s really important that we, as people, have humility in our understanding of the world around us. 

Can you speak more about the tools of anthropology that you bring to your job? 

Within program evaluation, we apply a lot of qualitative and quantitative methods to look at program design, effectiveness and appropriateness, including using qualitative approaches to tell stories about the impact of the work. I think that all those things have helped me be effective in understanding and evaluating challenges and possible solutions because people and communities and the related needs are not static, they are constantly changing. 

It’s hard to balance competing needs but we continue to evaluate the structures and policies that we’re setting up and the costs of making different short- and long-term decisions for individuals and families and for the organization. 

I have found theory of change and anthropology theory – as well as methodology and political economy classes – are really important and can affect how we approach the work and understand the different ways that we think about challenges.

I think anthropology is really systems thinking. As society and structures get more complex, the anthropology skillset – to look at challenges from different perspectives and being able to approach and have conversations with people from different cultures – is so helpful.

Was there a specific class or experience that stands out for you from your time at CSU?

I really liked working with Mary Van Buren, she taught the Theory class (ANTH 500), which I loved. Anthropological theory grounded me and continues to shape my thinking.

Method in Cultural Anthropology (ANTH 441) was a really important class, too, with Kate Browne who was my advisor. I enjoyed having a small cohort of other graduate students to wrestle with some of the big questions we were asking… we all had very different projects, we approached them differently, and we were able to have that space to learn from and push each other.

Where do you see opportunities and intersections between anthropology and public health? 

I think that public health is starting to be more informed by anthropology. Historically, public health focused more on health systems and less on people-based systems. My coursework from Johns Hopkins emphasized the need to ensure public health is connected to the people, which is very similar to a degree in anthropology. More and more with community based-public health, learnings and programs are directly or indirectly informed by ethnographic methods.

What are you most proud of since completing your Anthropology MA? 

I’m proud that with LEAP we have been able to build an organization and support a lot of community-based and community-driven programs in Roanoke. It has also been really awesome to see that how we are doing our community-based work is reflected in the feedback and development happening in other organizations and communities.  

Also, I’m proud that we, as an organization, can commit to continuing to change and improve how we do our work. That continual-improvement approach can be constant and exhausting, but it also aligns with the needs and realities of community work or policy work. We have to change, and to build in flexibility so that we are able to shift and change in response to the community.  

Do you have any advice you would provide to current students? 

I think that it’s important to acknowledge where you’re uncomfortable and move through it. For my thesis, I did a lot of fieldwork and many days, as an introvert, I had to just say, ‘OK, I can do this. I will do this.’ And I did and I am so thankful for the time I had to hone those skills.

I think it’s an incredibly important skill to learn how to make connections with a wide range of people who may have really different values. And anthropology will force you to do that and it will serve you well. 

What do you do outside of work for fun?

I have two young kids and a husband, and we spend a lot of time outside in the mountains and teaching the kids new skills, which is really interesting to watch how they learn and how we teach. And we grow, pick, cook, and eat a lot of delicious, local food.