Randi R. Byrd is a Professional Affiliate of the University of Vermont's Leadership for Sustainability Master's Program, with over a decade of community engagement experience within indigenous communities in North Carolina and nationally, around health and wellness practices through holistic communal approaches, community grassroots organizing that values indigenous ways of knowing and practices, affirming tribal self-determination in sustainable planning and fostering mutually beneficial partnerships that strategically and meaningfully strengthen communities. She is also a giant pumpkin grower and horticultural therapist, utilizing plants and ecosystems to show/remind us of tending relationships and offer old/new ways of seeing pathways through the teachings of nature. She served as the former Senior Program Officer for Community Engagement for the American Indian Center at UNC Chapel Hill and in 2016, received the C. Knox Massey Distinguished Service Award for her service to and with indigenous peoples facilitating the Healthy Native North Carolinians Network. She is also a sister of Alpha Pi Omega Sorority, Inc., and has an active leadership role in the North Carolina Native American Ethnobotany Project, which reaffirms relationships with native wild plant relatives, encourages remembering and relearning medicinal and cultural value of native wild plants, and documents and disseminates collective cultural knowledge about native wild plants in meaningful ways.