Bathsheba F. Bryant-Tarpeh earned her Ph.D. from Howard University in African Studies in which she focused on the intersection of Indigenous women’s land and natural resource rights and food and nutrition security in West Africa. She holds a Master’s degree from Howard University and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Spelman College. Bathsheba is a SisterMentors alumna who continues to mentor her longtime mentee, Ruth, a rising 12th grader focused on college admission.
Bathsheba is currently a Foreign Service Country Support Officer with the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In this capacity she supports USAID Missions across the Africa, Asia, and Latin America and Caribbean regions in addressing poverty and hunger for vulnerable populations. Prior to USAID, Bathsheba was a Mellon/ACLS Public Fellow and Senior Program Advisor at the Smithsonian Institution in the Office of International Relations and Global Programs. In this role, she managed programming for the institution’s Earth Optimism Initiative, a global movement aimed at sharing environmental solutions for a more just and sustainable world. As a social scientist, her academic focus centers on human rights approaches to development and environmental justice issues in Africa and the African Diaspora.