Curan Bonham

Curan Bonham, 1997 – Bonham is currently a Mickey Leland International Hunger Fellow with the Congressional Hunger Center (CHC), a non-profit organization that seeks to eliminate hunger and poverty worldwide. During his two-year fellowship, Bonham will be working with Bioversity International in India where his work will focus on food security and conservation issues. Bioversity International is a global research organization committed to fostering sustainable livelihoods through food and agricultural production to improve the lives of people in developing countries.

Prior to the CHC, Bonham was a Fulbright Scholar in Chile where he worked in conjunction with the University of Concepcion on a project called, Conservation of Endemic Biodiversity of the Nahuelbuta Range. Bonham holds a master’s degree in International Conservation and Development from the University of Montana and a bachelor’s in Natural Resources from Cornell University. He has worked as an agricultural extension agent in Orange County, N.Y. and as a forestry technician in the Intermountain West for Cornell Cooperative Extension and for the U.S. Forest Service. Bonham also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala where he worked on, and later directed, several integrated conservation development projects.

Bonham's primary interests lie in the preservation of agricultural biodiversity and the optimization of low input sustainable agriculture. He has written several publications on these topics and on his work in Central and South America. At East, Bonham played varsity lacrosse and soccer, and was named to the All Western New York Soccer Team his junior year. He was also a member of the Model U.N.