Rani has a bachelor’s degree in American studies from the University of California at Santa Cruz where she studied race and class disparities, nationally, and those relating specifically to environmental stressors and diseases affecting urban youth.  She spent the following years in the culinary arts and on local farms in the south, eventually moving to the southwest to study the complex relationships between our built environment, community vitality, equity, and our food system.  Rani received a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Arizona. For the past decade she has explored the internal and external world of our local food system and food ways.

She recently joined the faculty team in Nutritional Sciences here at the University of Arizona as an assistant professor of practice and director of the new Nutrition and Food Systems Degree Program.  She began teaching FOOD courses in the Spring of 2019.

Raised in Sacramento, California, Rani has called Tucson her home for twelve years.