BIOS
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Debora Nunes Lino Da Silva
Debora has been a militant of MST for many years. She has been part of MST Direction Board in the State of Alagoas, Northeast of Brazil. She has also contributed in many national tasks in the Movement, as a member of our National Coordination board and especially in the Production Sector.
Jo Guldi
Jo Guldi is Hans Rothfels Assistant Professor of Britain and its Empire at Brown University. She is author of Roads to Power and (with David Armitage) The History Manifesto. Her specialties include the history of capitalism and land use. Her current focus is on the history of British ideas about property rights, land law, and agronomy in international governance and development conversations in the nineteenth and twentieth century, a story about lawyers, map-makers, and peasant rebellions since 1870 that stretches from Ireland to India. Her next book is a history of land reform movements.
Janie Hipp
Janie Simms Hipp, J.D., LL.M. (Chickasaw) is Founding Director of the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative at the University Of Arkansas School Of Law and an enrolled member of the Chickasaw Nation. She previously served as Senior Advisor for Tribal Relations to Secretary Tom Vilsack, and prior to that served in the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture as the National Program Leader for Farm Financial Management, Risk Management Education, Trade Adjustment Assistance, and the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Program and also served as USDA Risk Management Agency Risk Management Education Director. She has had a long legal career of over 30 years in the field of agriculture and food law, food systems development, rural economic development, and Indian law.
Tessa Lowinske Desmond
Dr. Tessa Lowinske Desmond is a lecturer on Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights at Harvard University where she teaches, among other things, “The EMR of Food: How Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights are Parts of the Food We Eat.” Her research interests include food studies, ethnic studies, and multiethnic literature. She is a member of the League of Urban Canners (LUrC), a community gardener, and helped organize the Somerville Granola-Making Coop. She has also kept backyard chickens.
Smita Narula
Smita Narula is an educator and activist with two decades of experience in the field of human rights and public policy. She is author of dozens of academic articles and investigative reports on rights-related subjects, and has helped formulate policy, legal, and community-led responses to a range of social justice and ecological issues worldwide. Narula has worked globally to promote and defend access to nutritious food as a fundamental human right, and to ensure sustainability and justice in our food systems. She has led key research and advocacy initiatives to address the impact of agricultural and land use policies on food system sustainability and the right to food, paying particular attention to the accountability of corporations and international financial institutions for human rights abuses and to structural discrimination against communities marginalized on the basis of their race, gender, caste, or indigenous status. Narula is former legal advisor to the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food and is currently a Visiting Research Scholar at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. From 2003 to 2014, she was Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and Professor of the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law, and from 1997 to 2003 she served as India researcher and Senior Researcher for South Asia at Human Rights Watch. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and earned her B.A. and M.A. from Brown University.
SPEAKERS
Adam Calo
Adam Calo is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. He studies how the power of expertise can be distributed through citizen science and participatory research practices. In his research, he attempts to actualize these themes by facilitating a participatory mapping process to investigate the issue of farmland access.
Adam Riesselman
Adam Riesselman grew up on a small family farm in rural Western Iowa. Adam graduated as valedictorian from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, receiving a B.A. in Biochemistry: Cell and Molecular Biology and has worked for companies and organizations including The World Food Prize, The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, USDA Agricultural Research Service, and Du Pont-Pioneer. Adam is currently pursuing a PhD as a DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellow at Harvard University applying statistics and machine learning to problems in systems and synthetic biology.
Albie Miles
Albie Miles is Assistant Professor of Sustainable Community Food Systems at the University of Hawai’i, West O’ahu. Dr. Miles received his Ph.D. in Environmental Science, Policy and Management from UC Berkeley in 2013. His research explores the relationship between farming system biodiversity and ecosystem services from agriculture and the structural obstacles to more sustainable food and farming systems. He has held posts at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz.
Amanda Beal
Amanda Beal is a graduate of the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy's Agriculture, Food & Environment masters program, with a specialization in the "Convergence of Natural Resource Policy and Food Security." Amanda is currently enrolled in the Natural Resources and Earth Systems Science (NRESS) Ph.D. program at the University of New Hampshire. She presents on numerous food system and food security related topics at state, national and international conferences and events, and as a visiting lecturer at educational institutions. In February 2015, she was invited to serve as the inaugural Policy and Research Fellow at Maine Farmland Trust.
Amanda Gregory
Amanda Gregory is an attorney admitted to practice in Michigan and New York. As Legal & Policy Program Manager for Michigan Community Resources (MCR), she connects nonprofit organizations in need of legal counsel with volunteer attorneys seeking service opportunities. She is also an adjunct professor at University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, where her scholarship focuses are food law, public education policy, public service law, and military law.
Amber Kanazbah Crotty
Amber Kanazbah Crotty is a Navajo Nation Council Delegate and member of the Health, Education and Human Services Committee. Amber is born for the Kinyaa’ánii Clan, her Cheiis are Deeshchii'nii Clan and from To’Halstoii (Sheep Springs, NM). Amber comes from a long legacy of women leaders, strong weavers, tenacious sheepherders and loving grandmas. Ms. Crotty studied American Indian Studies-Law and History at University of California, Los Angeles. In her spare time she runs Beauty is Restored Family Farms.
Amy Cohen
Amy J. Cohen is Professor of Law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law where she studies informal and formal dispute resolution, competing ideologies of law and international development, and the political economy of food. She has been a visiting professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University in Toronto, the University of Turin, Faculty of Law in Italy, and a Fulbright-Nehru visiting professor at the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences in Kolkata, India. During the 2013-14 academic year, Cohen was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University. Before joining Ohio State, she taught at the Kathmandu School of Law in Nepal as a Fulbright scholar, clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver, Colorado, and worked on community development initiatives in Ghana, Nepal, and Thailand.
Angeline Gragasin
Angeline Gragasin is a NYC-based writer and filmmaker who tells stories about memory, ecology, and power. Gragasin is a member at NEW INC, the New Museum's incubator for artists and creative entrepreneurs, where she is currently working on a new sci-fi film that dramatizes Colony Collapse Disorder from a human perspective by characterizing insects as people in a future dystopian megacity—for which the majority of principal photography will be shot on drones. She holds an AB from The University of Chicago.
Carrie A Scrufari
Carrie A. Scrufari earned her J.D. from the University of Maryland in 2011, where she graduated magna cum laude. She belongs to the Order of the Coif and Order of the Barrister. Carrie is a member of the New York Bar and has clerked at the New York State Appellate Division Fourth Department and the New York Court of Appeals. She is currently a fellow at the Center for Agriculture and Food Systems at Vermont Law School, where she is earning her LL.M. degree in Agricultural and Food Law and Policy.
Cheryse Julitta Kauikeolani Sana
Cheryse Julietta Kauionalani Sana, Kaui, was born and raised in Waianae, Hawai‘i. Kaui received her BA in Hawaiian Studies from Hawaiinuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa. Kaui is currently the Farm Manager of MAO Organic Farms, a not-for-profit social enterprise venture whose mission is "to grow certified organic veggies and youth leaders.”
Dolores Bustamante
Dolores Bustamante is a proud mother of 4 children and 6 grandchildren. She emigrated from Mexico in 2003, and over the past 13 years has worked in several different jobs, including picking fruits and vegetables. Dolores is currently studying English and is a member of a women’s empowerment group called Mujeres Divinas (Divine Women), an ally of the Worker Justice Center of New York, and the National Farmworker Women’s Alliance.
Darci Schofield
For over eight years, Darci has worked at The Trust for Public Land working in land protection. She conserved 1,200 acres of farms and open space in MA and CT worth over $24 million, and secured $20 million in land acquisition capital. Currently she is the Urban Program Director working with 20 cities in MA and RI on climate resiliency through green infrastructure solutions. Darci has a BA from Boston University in Environmental Science, with a minor in Geology, a MS in Forestry from the University of Maine, Orono, and certification in Leadership and Negotiation from Harvard Law School.
Emily Broad Leib
Emily Broad Leib is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Law, as well as Deputy Director of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation. She co-founded and directs the Center's Food Law and Policy Clinic, the first law school clinic in the nation devoted to providing legal and policy solutions to nonprofit and government clients in order to address the health, economic, and environmental challenges facing our food system. She teaches courses on the topic and focuses her scholarship and practice on finding solutions to today’s biggest food system issues, aiming to increase access to healthy foods, prevent diet-related disease, eliminate food waste, and reduce barriers to market entry for small-scale and sustainable food producers.
Erica Buswell
Erica Buswell manages Maine Farmland Trust’s suite of farmland access programs and assists Maine farmland owners with placing agricultural conservation easements on their farms. She also provides leadership for the Beginning Farmer Resource Network of Maine, and has recently completed service on the boards for the Cooperative Development Institute, and the Eat Local Foods Coalition of Maine. She and her husband enjoy their life on their off-grid homestead in Searsport, Maine.
Frank Gundry White
Founder member of Yorkley Court Community Farm, the biggest land squat in the UK, which has been teaching people about low impact living, community building and food growing for three years and counting. He is part of a European network Reclaim the Fields a collection of people and projects who aim to take back control of our food system by using direct action, real needs grassroots and community work. Also Chair and core group member of the UK La Via Campesina union, The Landworkers' Alliance, which aims to realize food sovereignty through mobilizing and politicising small and medium scale farmers in the UK. Through a mixture of EU and UK lobbying and grassroots farmer to farmer solidarity they strengthen the position of their members. Frank has been working tirelessly fighting for land rights in the UK, the country in Europe with the most inequitable land distribution, he is also a Biodynamic Farmer and grower.
Frank Mangan
Frank Mangan is faculty in the Stockbridge School of Agriculture where he teaches, works directly with farmers and implements research in all aspects of sustainable vegetable production systems. A focus of his program since the late 90’s has been to evaluate production and marketing systems for vegetable and herb crops with an emphasis on crops popular among the growing immigrant communities in our region. He works extensively in Latin America and has been to Cuba four times on agricultural projects.
Jacqueline Hand
Professor Jacqueline Hand, of the University of Detroit Mercy Law School, teaches property, environmental and land use law, and American Indian Law. Her current scholarship has focused on connecting her teaching and research interests in environmental,and land use law with legal issues surrounding the revitalization of the city of Detroit. She also writes in international and American Indian law
Janell O’Keefe
Janell O’Keefe is one of seven co-founders and the Land & Policy Support Specialist at Keep Growing Detroit (KGD) and has been
working in Detroit’s urban agriculture movement since 2009. KGD supports a network of over 1,400 family, school, community, and market gardens in Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park, MI. Janell specifically supports these gardeners and farmers in navigating the property ownership and land acquisition maze that exists in Detroit. Janell is a graduate of the University of Michigan, with
degrees in anthropology, psychology, social work, and urban planning.
Jenny Rushlow
Jenny Rushlow is a Staff Attorney for CLF Massachusetts and Director of CLF’s region wide Farm & Food Initiative, which works to provide the legal and policy scaffolding to build a thriving regional food system. She created and launched CLF’s Legal Services Food Hub, a free legal services clearinghouse for farmers, food entrepreneurs, and related organizations. Prior to joining CLF in 2011, Jenny was an associate at Anderson & Kreiger LLP in Cambridge, MA, where she worked on a range of environmental, land use, and municipal matters.
Jessica Shoemaker
Professor Shoemaker’s scholarship focuses on American Indian land tenure and its consequences for community health and vitality in Indian Country. In addition to her work on historic federal Indian land policies, Professor Shoemaker is currently engaged in a long-term project aimed at creating legal strategies for a path forward out of the current problematic Indian land tenure institutions. She is also engaged in international, interdisciplinary action research on land use planning and community development through the University of Nebraska’s Rural Futures Institute. Before her academic career, Professor Shoemaker represented Indian farmers and ranchers and other Indian interests, both in private practice and as a Skadden Fellow with the Farmers Legal Action Group, Inc.
Kamuela Joseph Nui Enos
Kamuela Joseph Nui Enos was born and raised in Waianae, Hawai‘i. He received his both his BA in Hawaiian Studies and his MA in Urban and Regional Planning from University of Hawaii at Manoa. He was recently a commissioner on President Obama's White House Initiative on Asians and Pacific Islanders. Mr. Enos is current the Director of Social Enterprise at MA`O Organic Farms.
Mark Chatarpal
Mark Chatarpal is a researcher from Guyana, South America. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a specialist in Caribbean studies and was the recipient of the Frederick Ivor Case Book Prize. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Food Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Mary Swander
Mary Swander is the Poet Laureate of Iowa and a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Iowa State University. She is the author of over 14 books of poetry and non-fiction and numerous dramas. Currently, Swander is touring her plays Vang, a drama about recent immigrant farmers, and Map of my Kingdom, or Who’s Going to Get the Farm? Swander’s play Farmscape has been performed throughout the U.S. with a special performance for Secretary Vilsack at the U.S.D.A. Ice Cube Press published the play with a collection of essays in 2012. Swander is the co-founder of AgArts, a national group designed to imagine and promote healthy food systems through the arts.
Paola Macas Betchart
Paola Macas Betchart is an Environmental Anthropologist from Quito, Ecuador. Over the past ten years she has researched and worked on issues related to human rights, indigenous rights, and the rights of nature in Ecuador and in the US. Paola recently advocated with EPA representatives in a successful campaign for the new EPA Worker Protection Standard on pesticides. She is currently a worker rights advocate with the Worker Justice Center of New York, a nonprofit that provides legal representation, education, and advocacy to agricultural and other low-wage workers. She is also a steering committee member of the Finger Lakes Occupational Health Services in Rochester, NY and the National Alliance of Farmworker Women.
Phil Smith
Philip N. Smith, Ph.D. is an environmental toxicologist with broad ranging interests in contaminant exposure and responses among a variety of ecological receptors, particularly those that occur at the interface of modern agriculture and the broader environment. His research focuses on pathways of contaminant exposure among mammals, birds, aquatic organisms, humans, and trophic transfer of environmental contaminants. Dr. Smith also chairs the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) at Texas Tech University.
Pilar Egüez Guevara
Pilar Egüez Guevara, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist originally from Quito, Ecuador. She is director and founder of Comidas que curan (Foods that Heal), an international education project that uses ethnography and film to document food traditions and transformations in Latin American and Caribbean countries. Her research interests and publications encompass issues of global food politics, food justice, film-making, and public health in Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil and the U.S. As part of her doctoral research, she lived and visited Cuba periodically for about 10 years. She recently directed an experiential learning program in Havana with college students from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Rosario Jaramillo
Rosario Jaramillo considers herself a courageous and persistent working mother who, despite a difficult childhood, was able to graduate as a teacher in her native Mexico. Rosario came to the US 19 years ago after getting married and since then she has worked in a variety of jobs, from a fast-food restaurant to harvesting apples in the farms of Western New York. Currently, Rosario works as a preschool teacher at Agri-business Child Development, a nonprofit that provides early childhood education and social services to farmworker families. She is also a member of Mujeres Divinas (Divine Women) and a board member of the Finger Lakes Community Health, a member of the Migrant Clinician's Network.
Savi Horne
Savi Horne is Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers, Land Loss Prevention Project, a non-profit law firm has offered for more than thirty-three years, legal representation of clients, community education, and professional outreach in the effort to promote wealth, land preservation, and rural livelihoods. As a state, regional and national non-governmental organization leader, she has been instrumental in addressing the needs of small and socially-disadvantaged farmers. She graduated from Rutgers University, School of Law-Newark, New Jersey and was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1990.
Saulo Araujo
Saulo Araujo is the Global Movements Program Director at WhyHunger. In this position, Saulo works to advance initiatives of food sovereignty and agroecology in the US and worldwide by identifying resources and network opportunities that will strengthen the work of grassroots organizations and social movements. Originally from Brazil, Saulo brings years of experience working with urban and rural families in the United States and abroad. Prior to WhyHunger, he worked as the Latin America Program Coordinator for Grassroots International, and served as consultant to international funders, including the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. He has a bachelors of science degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Federal Rural University of Pernambuco state, Brazil and a M.A. in International Development and Social Change from Clark University. Saulo is a senior fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program, and has served as board member and advisor for many organizations, including The Food Project, New England Grassroots Environmental Fund and Justice at Work. He is a member of the US Friends of the Landless Workers Movement.
Severine von Tscharner Fleming
Severine is a farmer, activist, and organizer based in the Champlain Valley of New York. She is director of the Agrarian Trust and involved in The Greenhorns, a grassroots organization with the mission to recruit, promote and support the rising generation of new farmers in America. Severine is co-founder and board secretary of Farm Hack, an online, open-source platform for appropriate and affordable farm tools and technologies. She serves on the board of the Schumacher Center for New Economics, which hosts Agrarian Trust, her latest startup, focused on land access for beginning farmers, and permanent protection of affordable organic farmland. Severine attended Pomona College and University of California at Berkeley, where she graduated with a B.S. in Conservation/Agroecology.
Sonlatsa Jim-Martin
Sonlatsa “Sunshine” Jim-Martin is Navajo-Modoc enrolled in the Navajo Nation. She lives on the Navajo Reservation in Tohlakai, New Mexico. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from the Colorado College and is working on a Master’s Degree in Public Administration. She works for the COPE Project as the Coalition Manager for a CDC REACH grant in Gallup, NM. Past experience includes: Indian Education, Human Resources, Navajo Nation Social Services, Non-Profit Management, Navajo Nation Headstart, Navajo Nation Department of Health. She leads the “Navajo Food Policy Toolkit” collaborations on the Navajo Nation in coordination with the Harvard Food Law & Policy Clinic.
Steve Holt
Steve Holt writes about everything from food and agriculture to business and urbanism for publications and websites like The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, Edible Boston, The Atlantic's CityLab.com, and CivilEats.com. In 2011, his feature about sustainable hamburgers in Boston was selected to be a part of that year’s Best Food Writing anthology.
Terzah Tippin Poe
Terzah Tippin Poe, an Inupiat from the US Arctic, works as a 3rd party advisor for large-scale development projects. Her areas of expertise are sustainability management, vulnerable community/indigenous relations, land use, risk assessment/mitigation and policy. In addition, she lectures at Harvard, Tufts and other institutions on international environmental governance, indigenous rights and collaborative development.
PRESENTERS
Posters:
Amie Lindenboim
Amie Lindenboim, Policy Organizer for NOFA/Mass, is an attorney and urban gardener who lives with her family in Brookline, MA.
Mandy St. Hilaire
Cambridge Energy Alliance, under the direction of Meghan Shaw at City Hall, is connecting residents to resources like Mass Save to improve the environment and the economy so that Cambridge can win the $5 million Georgetown University Energy Prize.
Adam Sacks
Adam has had careers in education, holistic medicine, computer technology, politics and advocacy. For five years he directed a non-profit that worked with communities invoking basic democratic and constitutional principles to oppose detrimental local corporate activity. He has been a climate activist for the past thirteen years and has been studying and writing about Holistic Management since 2007.
Gordon Sacks
Gordon Sacks started 9 Miles East Farm in 2006 to make it easy for busy people to enjoy healthy food. The farm makes healthy local food accessible to new audiences through workplace and home delivery models.
Tess Brown-Lavoie
Tess Brown-Lavoie is a first-generation farmer and writer working in Providence, Rhode Island. She co-owns Sidewalk Ends Farm, a periurban farm in Providence, RI and Seekonk, MA. She coordinates the Young Farmer Network, which is based in Providence and connects members of the beginning farmer community in Rhode Island and neighboring states with a mission for a just, equitable, and sustainable local food system. She also serves on the New England Farmers Union Board of Directors, the National Young Farmers Coalition Advisory Committee, and the Rhode Island Food Policy Council.
Maisie Powell
Maisie Powell is an Environmental Studies student at the University of Vermont and has been working with Metta Earth Institute for the past year. Through her work, she hopes to reach out to others, connecting people to ways of nourishing the connection between self, society, and nature.
Dylan Frazier
Dylan Frazier leads volunteer groups to glean surplus crops from farms in eastern Massachusetts. All gleaned produce is donated to hunger relief agencies in our region.
Jim Hafner
Jim assumed overall management of Land For Good (LFG) in 2015 after serving as Deputy Director. He has over 20 years experience doing program and fund development, outreach and research for organizations in international agriculture, community development, and public health. He has worked with farmers, NGOs and researchers on land tenure, conservation farming, agro-forestry and watershed management, especially in the Global South. With graduate degrees in International Agriculture (M.S. University of California at Davis) and Natural Resources (Ph.D. Cornell University), Jim has taught environmental studies, soil science, and geography at universities in California and New England. After returning with his family to western Massachusetts, Jim is thrilled to be leading and growing such an outstanding team – and working to strengthen agriculture and food systems in New England. He and his family enjoy their local asparagus, glass bottled milk, and CSA shares in Hadley, Massachusetts.
Brianna Bowman
Brianna coordinates NIFTI, which works with Incubator Farm Projects nationwide to provide practical information on supporting new farmers through the land-based incubation model. Brianna is dedicated to realizing environmental, social and personal transformation through agriculture and completed her Permaculture Design Training with the Cornell University Cooperative Extension. She worked with refugee communities at the International Rescue Committee and African Community Center and as an Outreach Coordinator at Community Mediation. Brianna has worked on farms in CO, MD and France.
Exhibitors:
Frederique Apffel-Marglin
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin is Professor Emerita, Department of Anthropology at Smith College. She founded and directs the Sachamama Center for Biocultural Regeneration in the Peruvian High Amazon in 2009 where she works with indigenous communities as well as several High Schools in the province. She is the author of Subversive Spiritualities: How Rituals Enact the World (Oxford U. Pr. New York, 2011); and has published another four books and nine edited volumes many of them critiques of the dominant onto-epistemology.
Nicole Negowetti
Nicole Negowetti is an Associate Professor of Law at Valparaiso University Law School, where she teaches Torts and Food Law & Policy. Professor Negowetti’s scholarship examines the health, environmental, and economic consequences of policies shaping the U.S. food system. She also a co-founder and the Vice-Chair of the NWI Food Council, whose mission is to build a just, sustainable, and thriving locally-oriented food system through networking, education, and advocacy.
Dominique Edwards
Dominique Edwards is a Michigan City, Indiana native currently attending graduate school at DePaul University. Edwards is obtaining a M.A. from the Sustainable Urban Development program. What initially inspired Edwards’ journey, was a family garden built by her father, Richard Edwards, in 2009. Since 2011, Edwards has worked with five different non-profit organizations, acquiring a number of different skills in areas such as: GIS, urban agriculture, community development, organizational leadership and more.
Rebecca Valentine
Rebecca Valentine holds an M.A. in Environmental Law and Policy from Vermont Law School. She was a research intern with Center for Food Safety in Washington, D.C., serving as the primary researcher on their pollinator campaign. Rebecca remains passionate about the role of pollinators in food systems, spearheading VLS' status as the first neonicotinoid-free university in the country and testifying before the Vermont House Committee on Agriculture and Forest Products on reducing pesticide use.
Matthew Hoffman
Dr. Hoffman received his PhD in Rural Sociology from Cornell in 2011 and spent two years as visiting faculty at New York University, where he continues to teach a course on food systems planning. His work spans agriculture, natural resource management, and community development, focusing particularly on the challenge of managing public goods in landscapes fragmented by private ownership. He conducts research in Norway, Scotland, and Vermont, where he is restoring an old farm.
Erin Raser
Erin Raser is a dual MA candidate at American University and the U.N. Mandated University for Peace pursing a degree in International Affairs and Natural Resources and Sustainable Development. She has studied agricultural production in the classroom and in the field for more than 10 years working and living on various types of farms. Erin has also conducted research on agricultural issues in California, Washington DC, Baltimore, Boston and Costa Rica.
Abby Nathanson
Abby Nathanson graduated with honors from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she studied Sociology and Africana Studies. Abby directs Engaging People in Change: EPIC (epicjustice.org), a program that trains rural high school students to be social justice activists, and the Food/Farm/Faith Initiative in Dutchess County (foodfarmfaith.org), a project to unite people situated across food systems.
Johanna Wood
Johanna Wood has recently been collaborating with Caroline Shamberger and Sarah Skinker to launch the Protein Project with the Design for Food Literacy Program. She is the owner of Bio Sensible Design.
Steve Gluck
Steve Gluck first became aware of Community-Based-Natural-Resource-Management while traveling through Namibia with his son in the year 2000. He returned to Africa six times over the next seven years to study the issue in-situ, and in 2011 was invited to present my preliminary findings at the Society for Ecological Restoration world conference in Merida, Mexico. A year later he gave a similar presentation at EcoSummit-2012 at Ohio State University. His research is ongoing.
Alexandria Ward & Amber Orozco
Amber Orozco and Alexandria Ward are second year graduate students in American University's Global Environmental Politics program in Washington D.C. Raised in Los Angeles, Amber is a Xicana and critical geography scholar whose interests are at the intersection of race, gender, and environmental justice. From Houston, Alexandria's interests are in food systems, particularly in urban spaces, and sustainable agriculture. Both Amber and Alexandria enjoy sipping a cup of coffee and talking race and gender theory.
Sally Voris
Sally Voris has used biodynamic practices at White Rose Farm for over 10 years. She encourages visitors to pick their own food and to visit with the farm animals. The farm offers full moon gatherings and seasonal events. A writer, storyteller and community organizer, she recently initiated a garden project at an inner city school in Baltimore to create a space that will spark the imagination of the students there.
Bessie DiDomenica
Dr. Bessie DiDomenica is a public policy researcher who specializes in food policy and sustainable communities. Her work examines the challenges of feeding large populations in urban areas. Her latest research explores the relationships between our global food system, the demand for land and natural resources for food, alternative food systems, population growth, food security, social justice and food as a national security concern. Dr. DiDomenica is also a social entrepreneur, public speaker, and teacher.
CONFERENCE ORGANIZERS
Margiana Petersen-Rockney
Margiana grew up on a dairy goat farm in Mass. She studied Geology and Biology at Brown University. For four years she had a five acres vegetables and livestock farm and internship program for young women to learn about farm systems. With a Wild Gift Fellowship she founded the Young Farmer Network (YFN) to bring together, educate, and support 300+ new farmers. She also worked with beginning farmers and service providers at New Entry Sustainable Farming Project. In her two years at Harvard Margiana created the Food Literacy Project Fellowship program. Additionally, she manages the Harvard Garden Internship and oversees the Harvard farmers’ market. Outside of Harvard, Margiana is on the board of YFN, the advisory committee of the Beginning Farmer Network of Mass, and still grows about an acre of her own strain of locally-adapted seed garlic.
Maggie Krueger
Maggie Krueger is a Master of Theological Studies candidate at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) with a focus in religion, ethics, and politics. She obtained her BA in journalism from Ohio University’s Honors Tutorial College in Athens, Ohio, where she developed an interest in religion reporting, international relations, and food justice. Maggie’s current research interests include utilizing food literacy, gardening, and cooking as catalysts for peace, responding to concerns of poverty, hunger, and climate change. With a particular focus on community organizing, Maggie explores the roles of religious communities in movements toward a sustainable food system and in the future, Maggie hopes to foster a stronger link between religious communities and sustainable agricultural movements as an activist for food justice.
Ona Balkus
Ona is a Senior Clinical Fellow in the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, where she provides legal and policy guidance to community advocacy groups and non-profits who are working to improve their communities’ food systems. Her clients have included advocacy coalitions in Mississippi, Navajo Nation, and La Paz, Bolivia, among others. Ona also works on the Clinic’s Food Waste Initiative, which advocates for policy changes to decrease wasted food and promote a wide range of food recovery models. Ona received her joint J.D./MPH from Harvard Law School and Harvard School of Public Health.
Alfredo Rojas
Alfredo is a Master of Theological Studies candidate at Harvard Divinity School (HDS) concentrating in African religious studies. He received a BA at Florida State University where he studied religion and mathematics. His research interests lie in environmental ethics and anthropology. He hopes to conduct research in West Africa on village-level food production to learn about how villagers sustain themselves in the face of climate change and environmental difficulties. A component of this research is also to learn the ways in which food is incorporated into social and religious life. Alfredo enjoys volunteer work, cooking, and reading. He is very excited to be a part of the Food Literacy Project team at Harvard!
Laura Clerx
Laura Clerx is an undergraduate Food Literacy Project Fellow studying Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and English at Harvard College. She researches plant physiology, including plant physiological response to climate change, and is interested in agriculture at the level of plant biology. She is also interested in the food system more broadly, including the social justice issues that affect how food is produced and distributed to different communities of people. Laura grew up near our conference organizer, Margiana Petersen-Rockney, attended 4-H at her dairy goat farm, and raised a few goats in her family’s backyard. All of which contributed to her deep interest in agriculture and the food system. She is very excited to be a part of the 2016 Just Food Conference.
Alexander G. Leone
Alex (or Alejandro) is a third-year law student at Harvard Law School and President of The Harvard Food Law Society. He is a native of New Jersey and attended college there at Rutgers University, where he studied philosophy, psychology, and Spanish. Alex has participated in both the Harvard Environmental Law and Policy Clinic (twice) and the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic; in the Food Law in Policy Clinic, he worked on projects that explored tort law as a means to regulate the use of antibiotics in animal agriculture and advocated for changes in federal legislation that regulates child nutrition. He is an Articles Editor for the Harvard Human Rights Journal, and he recently published an online article in the Harvard Journal on Legislation that dissects the arguments against labeling genetically modified foods.