Horowitz and one of her colleagues were traveling in a car when one of the tires blew out. The vehicle crashed into a "tro-tro," or shared van, according to Moore. Horowitz, who was not wearing a seat belt, was thrown from the vehicle and died several hours later at a community hospital, he said. Two other people were killed in the collision, Moore added.
At Dartmouth, Horowitz majored in geography and studied in Zimbabwe on a Dartmouth environmental studies foreign study program. Horowitz's experience on the FSP helped drive her desire to return to Africa, according to Caroline Pott '02, who also participated in the program.
"That FSP made a lot of us go back to Africa it definitely captures your heart in that way," Pott said.
Geography professor Susanne Freidberg, who taught Horowitz at Dartmouth, described her as "soft-spoken but determined" and as someone dedicated to finding what kind of difference she could make in the world.
"I remember one of my colleagues saying, I wish we had 10,000 students like Leah Horowitz,'" Freidberg said.
On campus, Horowitz was an intern at the Dartmouth organic farm, according to Pott. She was also involved in Book Buddies and various other volunteer activities through the Tucker Foundation, Pott said.
Moore said he began his 10-year-long friendship with Horowitz during his freshman winter at weekly organic farm potluck dinners.
"Leah was very willful," Moore said. "She had a commitment to connecting with people. She was caring, generous, vivid and extraordinary in a lot of ways."
Moore said he learned many "indescribable" lessons from Horowitz.
"The way she was very concerned with How should I make my life be useful?'" he said. "She was almost pushy about what seemed important to her and of value suggesting that we need to take a more serious stand about what is of value to us."
After Horowitz's death, the geography department created the Leah Horowitz Award for Social Justice in her honor. The department presented the award to Ediz Tiyansan '09 at the 2009 graduation ceremony. The award consisted of $100 gift, a compass and a $100 donation to the non-governmental organization Action Against Hunger.
"I always think of her as bringing people together," Pott said. "You could talk about anything with her big issues but at the same time, she would love to just turn on the music and dance. She was always dancing. She was a really dynamic person."
After her senior year at Dartmouth, Horowitz attended the United Nations conference on genetically modified seeds in South Africa and co-authored an article with Freidberg in the journal Africa Today, Freidberg said.
Horowitz spent a year working in Washington, D.C., for National Geographic magazine before moving to Tillamoke, Ore., as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer, according to Moore. She eventually returned to the nation's capital to work as a congressional staffer.
Horowitz also received an M.S. degree in Food Policy and Economics at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, according to her biography on IFPRI's website.
Freidberg said she was impressed by Horowitz's persistence in following her dreams to go back to Africa when many students "end up settling for less."
Shashidhara Kolavalli, leader of the IFPRI Ghana program, described Horowitz as someone who was "constantly trying to better herself" in a statement to the IFPRI staff.
"I was privileged to work with someone for whom our vision mattered a great deal, even on a day-to-day basis," Kolavalli wrote. "Despite her academic inclination and capabilities that would have suggested the pursuit of a Ph.D, she chose to go to Ghana because she felt that research didn't help people directly and she wanted to learn to manage development activities."
Regina Birner, who worked with Horowitz at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Horowitz had made several important contributions to the field of agricultural extension, including contributions to sourcebooks and discussion papers on gender issues in agriculture for the World Bank.
Birner was one of over 500 mourners at Horowitz's funeral service in Philadelphia on June 4, Birner said.
Another service with approximately 150 mourners was held in Ghana, according to Moore.
"Getting value from the world is so much harder than it seems, and Leah was always working to get that value and to get me and others to get it too," Moore wrote of Horowitz in his eulogy. "Among my fears today, my closest is that I will become less good, with Leah gone, with her attentions and assertions and model missing."
