This announcement originally appeared in IANR News on March 3, 2020
University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student Ashley Mulcahy Toney is one of 30 students from across the nation selected for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Future Leaders in Agriculture program.
Toney, a graduate student in the Department of Nutrition and Health Sciences in the College of Education and Human Sciences, spent a week in February in Washington, D.C. taking part in USDA briefings and learning about career opportunities. She also attended the USDA’s largest annual meeting, the 2020 Agricultural Outlook Forum, and met with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue.
“What I enjoyed most was mentoring the undergraduates and telling them about my path because it hasn’t always been a very straight path,” Toney said.
Toney took a unique path to Nebraska. She grew up in the Wilmington neighborhood of Los Angeles. Wilmington is home to many Latino and foreign-born residents, including Toney’s mother who immigrated there from Mexico. Like many of her neighbors, Toney grew up speaking both English and Spanish.
As a young girl, she dreamed of being a nurse and was always drawn to community health in general. She attended the University of California, Davis as a first-generation student. She worked jobs, including serving as a translator for UC CalFresh Nutrition Education Program, which is the equivalent of Nebraska’s SNAP-Ed program. While working on translating curriculum, Toney met Virginia Chaidez, who was the lead UC CalFresh evaluator at the time. Chaidez quickly noticed Toney’s potential and work ethic and encouraged her to pursue graduate school.
Chaidez is now an assistant professor in the Nutrition and Health Sciences Department at Nebraska. After she moved to Nebraska, she recruited Toney to do the same.
“She has such a passion for science, but it’s really fueled by her desire to help people and to connect the science and bring that to people in ways that are meaningful and helpful,” Chaidez said.
Toney is working on a dual specialization in community nutrition and health promotion, as well as biochemical molecular nutrition. As part of the application process for this honor, Toney wrote an essay addressing the challenge of linking basic science and community outreach.
“Specifically, a disconnect lies between prevention of disease in underserved populations, education, availability of fresh foods in culturally relevant markets, and farmer connection to these markets,” Toney wrote.
Her research focuses on promoting whole foods such as red raspberries for metabolic disease prevention and hoping to increase buy-in for consumers and by berry farmers.
She is driven by her desire to increase the voice for minority health in agriculture and hopes to become a professor one day.
Read her essay titled, “The Greatest Challenge Facing Agriculture Over the Next 5 Years”.