Biography
Jamila Walida Simon earned her Bachelor's Degree from Wells College and her Master's Degree from Cornell University. She began her career with Cornell University Cooperative Extension in New York City (CUCE-NYC) under the direction of Cornell Human Ecology (CHE) alum, Dr. Davis-Manigaulte the former CUCE-NYC Family and Youth Development Program Leader. Jamila served as the CYFAR CITY Project Coordinator while with CUCE-NYC. This launched her love for anchoring youth voices in her positive youth development work.
After she completed her master's degree at Cornell University in Natural Resources, Simon joined the staff at Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County, where she served as the Program Manager of the 4-H Urban Outreach Program at West Village. Then, Simon joined the NYS 4-H team and currently serves as the NYS 4-H Civic Engagement Specialist. In 2021, Jamila Walida joined the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research (BCTR) to serve as the Associate Director of Innovation in Youth Programs. She serves as a bridge and connector to the community, translating kitchen table conversations about community needs.
Simon is currently wrapping up her PhD studies in Global Development at Cornell, where she focuses on working to share the public value of research relationships with Black farmers. These relationships have helped to expand Simon's work with agriculture organizations, and the lessons learned will be integrated into her new role as Principal Investigator for the 4-H CYFAR Let's Grow Urban Agriculture through Community and Youth (LEGACY) program.
Research interests
Current Research
Jamila Walida currently oversees three research projects. My dissertation research explores the lessons we can learn about developing effective research relationships with Black farmers and the role of race in the pursuit and application of purpose. In addition, my research examines lessons learned about healing trauma distilled from Black farmer practices to heal their relationship with the land they seek to shepherd. The recommendations generated allow youth-serving organizations and agriculture programs fodder as they struggle to serve youth of color.
Secondly, Jamila Walida is the Principal Investigator of the 4-H Children, Youth, and Families At-Risk (CYFAR) Let’s Grow Urban Agriculture through Community and Youth (LEGACY) program. This program is the 6th, 5-year federally funded project to work with underserved youth to build their awareness and interest in urban agriculture. This program also helps my career come full circle from Project Coordinator to Principal Investigator. This $640,000 program is a partnership between NYS 4-H Youth Development at Cornell University, National, Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Related Sciences (MANRRS), Cornell University Cooperative Extension of NYC, several Boys and Girls clubhouses in NYC, and the Tree of Life Center in Jamaica, Queens. Jamila Walida seeks to directly translate this learning from her dissertation research into this programming and will integrate the lessons learned about healing trauma into her youth work.
Jamila Walida also has dynamic partnerships and an innovative approach to exploring obesity through a community lens by proposing to partner with housing authorities as they each have unique organizational structures to allow residents, both adult and youth, to serve as community researchers. This research aims to build research capacity within marginalized communities and encourages the most vulnerable to be a part of the solutions designed.
As an Extension Associate at Cornell University, Jamila Walida has been a part of a myriad of research projects as a contributor, reviewer, evaluator, and convenor. Jamila Walida excels with research projects that are collaborative and where the benefits are mainly to the audience. The themes of the research projects range from sustainable agriculture, mentoring of at-risk youth, food systems, and communications. In my role as an Associate Director of Innovation of Youth Programs, Jamila Walida works strategically to identify new communities that need support.
More recently, her work has been in Syracuse, NY, because the city is cited as being second in the nation for child poverty. Jamila Walida spearheaded a collaboration between Cornell University’s College of Engineering and the Syracuse Police Athletic League for undergraduates to translate their engineering knowledge to middle school youth to increase their exposure to engineering.
In building partnerships with the Syracuse City School District, Jamila Walida's work also focuses on middle school youth to increase positive peer influence and tackle mental health challenges using audiences with influence.
Future Research
It is my hope that my current and future research will continue to welcome invisibilized audiences to become more visible and to be welcomed into research relationships that will benefit both individuals and communities. Jamila Walida hopes to heal trauma as she marries academia and community to explore poverty, policy, and research.
The research Jamila Walida would like to engage in in the future would partner with private research institutions with historically underrepresented colleges and universities, minority-serving institutions, and/or 1994 tribal colleges and universities. Jamila Walida will continue to build her practice of participatory action research (PAR) and explore by equipping communities with additional tools to navigate in academic spaces.
The body of Jamila Walida's work has been engaged around intersectional issues. Jamila Walida plans to continue to work with marginalized audiences at the intersection of food, housing, and social entrepreneurship. In the future, Jamila Walida would like to offer research with housing authorities where families in poverty are concentrated. Policy recommendations would then be offered to the Consortium of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA) as well as researchers in the field.
Not working with students at this time.