Amanda Rogers Sakiye ’18
Amanda has always loved being outdoors. She finds pleasure in absorbing the beauty in the environment surrounding her thanks to her father raising her through many hiking excursions, camping trips, beach days, park barbecues, and other outdoor trips. Her love for the Earth continues to this day.
Amanda graduated with a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from California State Polytechnic University Pomona. There, she gained a passion for ecologically-conscious land design. After graduating, she worked as an Associate Account Manager for BrightView Landscape Maintenance. In charge of many crews, together they maintained the landscape of properties such as the Soka University of America, the Montage Resort, various shopping centers, and various home owners’ associations. Her love for California’s native plants led her to become a Regenerative Landscape Designer for a new company called Earth Steward Ecology. In this position, she learned about the medicinal and edible qualities of many of California’s native flora. She designed spaces utilizing gray water as a resource for fruit trees. Her team installed rain tanks that captured rainwater from the roof to be utilized in the landscape. They even designed planting plans in a way in which each species took care of one another.
Joining AYF was a way for Amanda to connect with her family’s heritage by learning Japanese and its culture. She is also thrilled to gain a global community of lifelong friends. Of course, she also saw this opportunity as a chance to grow and explore not only her cultural roots but who she really is inside.
As a member of Team Amami, whose goal is to revamp life not only on Awaji but life for the rest of Japan and the globe, she aims at changing the way people live by allowing homes to become self-sufficient in resources including food, water, and energy. With that long-term goal in mind, Team Amami’s members are increasing their knowledge in the field of regenerative living so that they can create an attractive lifestyle for new residents to live in Awaji. Within this project, Amanda’s planting knowledge is useful for designing food systems.
From there, she intends to follow her passion of establishing regenerative food systems as part of a whole lifestyle of ecological consciousness. Although she will be returning to Southern California, she wishes to return to Japan or work abroad in other countries in the future.