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Announcing our Summer 2023 intern

We're very pleased to announce that Lizah Makombore will be our Program & Research Intern for Summer 2023!

Lizah will be joining VEOC with an extensive background in research, economic development, sustainability, and cooperative economics. To kick off the internship, Lizah will help us prepare for and put on our 21st Annual Vermont Employee Ownership Conference on June 1 at UVM's Davis Center. Following the conference, Lizah will take on a research project and survey of employee-owned companies in Vermont, capturing a snapshot of employee ownership across the state in 2023 and seeking out information we can use to help our employee-owned companies continue to thrive (find our 2022 survey results here).

We look forward to getting to know Lizah better and having a great summer at VEOC!

 

Lizah has over 10 years of experience working in the NGO sector, development sector, public finance institutions and institutions of higher learning.  Lizah has experience working on United States Agency for International Development (USAID) project called the South African International Business Linkages (SAIBL) where she took up multiple roles and played a critical role in implementing specific interventions for small to medium sized farmers and businesses. The role at SAIBL exposed Lizah to farmers from all the provinces in South Africa both commercial and subsistence farmers. From this role she moved to an NGO based in South Africa called the National Business Initiative, there she took up the Project Manager role. At the NBI Lizah contributed to multi-faceted projects at regional level and local level in the following sectors: climate change, water sustainability, regenerative agriculture, public private and partnerships, equity and justice and local economic development. After the NBI, Lizah ventured into academia, and has spent the last 6 years of her life being a research assistant, lecturer, curriculum developer and reviewer of assessments. Lizah is current a PHD student the University of Vermont and is a fellow of the Leadership of the Ecozoic and The Gund Institute of the Environment. Her current research interests include, cooperative economies, solidarity economies, environmental and social justice, resilient communities and ecological economic. Lizah is married, is a mom to a pair of twins and loves to write childrens books as her all time hobby.