Alvaro Valle
University of Florida, Interdisciplinary Ecology
Home country: Nicaragua

I was born May, 3 1981 in Managua, Nicaragua in the midst of a new government attempting to establish itself after an armed revolution in 1979. Prevailing economic doom and other unsavory marks of the times forced my parents to immigrate to Miami in 1983. I eventually ended up in Chattanooga, TN, where I spent my formative high school years doing a lot of mountain biking, climbing, and whitewater and enjoying barbeque. During these years, much summer and break time was spent in Nicaragua, some of it catching Dengue fever virus. Not a recommended experience, but it lead me to seriously consider a biological science as a career. To that end, I attended Tufts University in the metro Boston area (Go Sox.), where I received a BA in Biology. After this, I completed an internship in Restoration Ecology with the National Park Service in the Santa Monica Mountains, California. I also worked as a teacher in a summer program for immigrant Kids in Boston and as an Outdoor Director. After spending much time on farms in Nicaragua, volunteering on organic farms in Massachusetts and Tennessee, and discovering agroecology, I was fascinated by the simplicities, complexities, and potential of this field. I also now began to understand my role as an immigrant and a Nicaraguan in attempting to solve major problems through agroecology in a country rich in potential, poor in wealth, and destroyed by war. Thus, I am a student in the Interdisciplinary Ecology program in the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Florida.