Past TIFO Students

At TIFO, mentoring the next generation of environmental health professionals is central to our mission. We believe that lasting change depends not only on addressing today’s challenges but on preparing tomorrow’s leaders. By sharing knowledge, offering hands-on training, and fostering meaningful connections, we help students and young professionals build the skills, values, and experience needed to protect public health and environmental justice around the world.

Sydney Mudgett

Marketing Intern

About Sydney

Brock Keller

Research Intern

About Brock

Mason Burns

Research Intern

About Mason

Yvette Bonney

Administrative / Research Intern

About Yvette

Piper Christian

Research Intern

About Piper

Yoni Rodriguez

Senior Research Student

About Yoni

Astrian Horsburgh

Research Intern

About Astrian

Madi Thurston

Research Intern

About Madi

Natalie Davies

Social Media Intern

About Natalie

Luke Kawano

Research Intern

About Luke

Steven Melle

Steven Melle joined TIFO for the summer of 2025 as a project support intern. Steven is a senior at WSU studying environmental science. He is also a GIS wiz. Having Steven on the team meant he was able to execute real-time data entry and mapping while other TIFO team members were out in the field. This was monumental in that it enabled our team members in the field to have access to updated maps, informing their daily field work. Steven first heard about TIFO in 2024 when TIFO’s executive director, Casey, presented at a meeting of WSU’s Environmental Sustainability Alliance (ESA) club.

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Sydney Mudgett

Sydney is a student at Washington State University’s Carson College of Business, double-majoring in Marketing and Entrepreneurship.

After graduation, Sydney aspires to work as a Marketing Director in the fashion industry, where she can combine her passions for the analytical and creative aspects of marketing.

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Brock Keller

Brock is a recent University of Idaho graduate holding degrees in Environmental Science and International Studies. He is now pursuing a Master of Environmental Management program at Duke University.

His interest in global environmental health, water resources, and GIS analysis led him to TIFO, where he interned for a year before fully joining the team post-graduation. Brock has worked and studied overseas for several years. In high school, he was selected for the Rotary Youth Exchange Program in France and was named the Bretagne-Mayenne district youth representative. He pursued higher studies at the University of New York in Prague before coming to Idaho for the Environmental Science program. Throughout his collegiate career, Brock worked as a translator, interned at a biodiversity non-profit in Costa Rica, spent months teaching adult evening classes and working on an ecological project in rural Morocco, conducted stream research in Washington State, and spent a month in Uzbekistan with TIFO on their preliminary assessment of the Aral Sea project. His professional experience and academic interest in environmental health and desertification led him to be selected as one of the U.S. Department of State’s 2022 Critical Language Scholars, where he spent 2 months in Jaipur, India, at the University of Chicago’s American Institute of Indian Studies. Brock organizes and participates in an alumni mentoring board for early-career environmental scientists.

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Yoni Rodriguez

Yoni’s graduate thesis investigated the use of precision agriculture to minimize pesticide drift exposure among tree fruit workers in the Yakima Valley. Yoni has worked with the King County Public Health Hazardous Waste Management Program and the UW Environmental Health Laboratory in developing a new method to estimate lead exposure concentrations in aluminum cookware brought to the U.S. by refugee and immigrant communities, with the goal of preventing lead poisoning in children. Yoni is currently a Research Scientist at the University of Washington. He plans to continue collaborating with TIFO and other global researchers to work with communities to improve occupational and environmental health outcomes for vulnerable populations.

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Astrian Horsburgh

Astrian graduated from UC Berkeley in with a degree in geography, after completing a cartography-based senior honors thesis project on the socio-environmental impacts of lithium mining in Chile’s Atacama Desert. This project was drawn from Astrian’s research on lithium in Latin America, especially Peru, conducted as a TIFO intern. Presently, Astrian is a Research Intern with the Health Equity Institute of Massachusetts.

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Luke Kawano

Luke Kawano graduated from the University of Idaho with a degree in Environmental Science and a certificate in climate change. He worked with the City of Moscow, Idaho, to develop their first greenhouse gas assessment using modeling software. He now works as a Source Water Protection Specialist for the Idaho Rural Water Association. He is originally from Boise, Idaho. For fun, he enjoys camping, fishing, and spending time with family and friends.

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Piper Christian

Piper Christian graduated from the University of Utah, double-majoring in Political Science and Environmental Studies with a certificate in GIS. In collaboration with TIFO, Piper conducted GIS analysis of artisanal mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo and mapped the social and environmental impacts of lithium mining in Peru. Outside of her work with TIFO, Piper studied how prolonged droughts associated with climate change displace subsistence farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa, and published a piece about environmental contamination caused by copper mining in the United States and Chile. Piper is an Air Quality & Climate Policy Associate with Stewardship Utah.

Piper is deeply grateful to TIFO staff for providing networking opportunities, research guidance, and mentorship to support her and other young people interested in environmental careers.

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Nataly Davies

Nataly is a Global Media Strategist at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories. She has a background in social media, content creation, and photography. Nataly graduated with a degree in Public Relations from the University of Idaho. While there, she was a feature writer and photographer at Blot Magazine and a former photo editor. Her work for TIFO included social media and marketing assistance. When she’s not working, she enjoys freelance photography and spending time with her family.

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Madi Thurston

Madi graduated from the University of Idaho in May 2021 with a degree in environmental science and minor in Spanish. While at UI, she completed a research internship with TIFO using spatial analysis to explore patterns of soil lead exposure in rural mining villages in Nigeria. She presented her work at multiple conferences including: the Idaho Undergraduate Research Conference, the University of Idaho College of Science Student Research Exposition, the University of Idaho Undergraduate Research Symposium, and the 30th International Conference on Soil, Water, Energy, and Air, where she was recognized as the first place winner of the student poster competition. She received funding to do complete her undergraduate research with TIFO through the University of Idaho Summer of Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF).

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Yvette Bonney

Yvette is a University of Idaho graduate, with a double major in Environmental Science and International Studies with a minor in French. Ms. Bonney worked for TIFO for nearly two years, supporting project outreach and research. She traveled to Uzbekistan to assist with preliminary sampling and project development in October 2022. Ms. Bonney also assisted with research at the UI Animal Veterinary Food Sciences & Biotechnology Lab.

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Mason Burns

Mason is a senior at Washington State University studying Architecture. He is developing an in-depth global plan to address the climate crisis titled The Climate Recovery Plan which evaluates environmental, economic, and moral concerns. He is collaborating with TIFO to develop a new section focusing on responsible mining internationally. He hopes to work with other organizations and communities to enhance the document by creating a policy representative of people’s needs and rooted in scientific fact. He believes that by uniting to provide such a plan, we may have a better chance of saving our Earth and ensuring a safe future for all.

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Past TIFO Students​

Sydney Mudgett

Brock Keller

Mason Burns

Yvette Bonney

Piper Christian

Yoni Rodriguez

Astrian Horsburgh

Madi Thurston

Natalie Davies

Luke Kawano

Past TIFO Students