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Hailey Baker was born in New Jersey and moved five times within Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee before heading off to college in Arizona in 2014. She graduated from Arizona State University in May 2018 with a Bachelor of Arts in Sustainability and has continued her exploration of the world ever since. While she was in school she worked as an intern for a local farmers market and volunteered for a humanitarian organization at the Arizona-Mexico border, which set her up perfectly for her current AmeriCorps role. Before coming to Washington to serve as a Harvest Against Hunger VISTA she was working as a cellar hand at the Francis Ford Coppola Winery in California, which solidified her interest in agriculture and working with diverse groups of people.

Hailey is serving in SeaTac, Washington as a Year 1 Harvest Against Hunger VISTA with the International Rescue Committee, an international refugee resettlement organization that supports newly-arrived refugees, asylees, and special immigrants get oriented to their new lives in the United States. Hailey works with the New Roots program, which connects refugees and other IRC clients to land to grow culturally-relevant food while educating about gardening and healthy eating. As a Year 1 VISTA, Hailey is helping New Roots build new processes from scratch, and her projects so far have included creating a Food Access Guide for IRC staff to use with food-insecure clients, coordinating and piloting grocery store tours for new arrivals, and creating data collection tools for the New Roots emergency food pantry.