Sefra Alexandra -The Seed Huntress- is an endurance race ethnobotanist on a perennial hunt to preserve the biodiversity of our wild and cultivated lands through seed conservation.
Through Her ethnobotanical expeditions she has studied with the Hopi in Arizona, USA; the Hadzabe in Tanzia; foraged for wild foods in the Amazon; and explored totem crops in the South Pacific and island nations around the world.
Sefra leads - The Ecotype Project - to amplify the amount of truly local native seed available for ecological restoration, creating the first ecoregional seed supply chain in the Northeast, USA. She is on the steering committee for the newly formed Northeast Seed Network and the Northeast Bioregional Education Coordinator for the Ecological Health Network.
In 2020 she began BOATanical.org where she guides ‘backyard expeditions’ with citizen scientists that are paddlin’ for the pollinators, planting native plants by boat along riparian corridors.
The Seed Huntress started the Southport Globe Onion Initiative to revive a prolific allium heirloom back to her home soils - initiating the annual Southport Globe Onion Festival.
She has conducted seed conservation fieldwork around the globe, fortifying community seed banks on island nations after natural disasters with Tactivate - a disaster response organization & The Readiness Collective, a resilience skills school she runs with her twin brother. She is a certified Permaculture educator, Edible Forest Garden designer, seed saver and wilderness skills instructor.
She was a Genebank Impacts Fellow of the Crop Trust and worked for Svalbard The Global Seed Vaults BOLD Project to safeguard seed collections of countries around the earth.
Sefra Alexandra holds her M.A.T. in Agroecological Education from Cornell University, is a WINGS WorldQuest expedition flag carrier, their Associate Board Explorer in Residence & a Member International of the Explorers Club. Her work has been featured in FORBES magazine.
Language spoken: English
Photo credit: Jonathan R. Beckerman