Panels and Workshops

Biographies

Dr. Alice Ammerman is a professor in Department of Nutrition, Gillings School of Global Public Health and directs the Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. Her research focus is on obesity and chronic disease prevention among underserved populations with a particular interest in the interface between public health and local sustainable food systems. She also does work with social entrepreneurship as a sustainable approach to social justice, economic development, and health. 

Meghan Cohorst is a national co-coordinator of the Student/Farmworker Alliance (SFA), a national network of students and youth organizing in partnership with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to improve wages and working conditions for Florida farmworkers and end modern-day slavery in the fields.  Youth organizing through SFA has been a key component of the CIW's Campaign for Fair Food, contributing to hard-fought victories against Taco Bell, McDonald's, Burger King, Subway, Whole Foods and Compass Group.  Currently, SFA leads the national Dine with Dignity campaign calling on campus food service providers to enter into agreements with the CIW to guarantee fair wages and just treatment for tomato pickers. 

Nancy Creamer is Director of the Center for Environmental Farming Systems and a Professor in the Horticultural Science Dept. at NCSU. She recently led a statewide initiative "Building a Local Food Economy in North Carolina" which will result in the release of a statewide action plan in March of this year. CEFS does research, outreach and teaching in Sustainable Agriculture and takes a farm-to-fork approach. 

Elena Dulys is one of the Southeast organizers for the Real Food Challenge.  She was one of the central planners for SYFAS and over the past years has worked with students in Maryland, Virginia, DC, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas.  She was born, raised, and continues to attend school in Virginia.  She studies Environmental Policy and Planning at Virginia Tech, loves to cook, and spend her past summer working as an organic farmer and interning part-time with Appalachian Sustainable Development.

Durham Inner-city Gardeners (DIG) is a youth-driven, urban farming leadership development program that empowers teens by teaching organic gardening, healthy choices and food security values.  The program emphasizes sustainable living and growing practices, mindful eating, ecological balance, and the natural recycling of organic materials for plant health and nourishment.   

Cameron Farlow is currently working towards her Master's Degree in Appalachian Studies with a concentration in Sustainable Development at Appalachian State University in Boone, NC. She is particularly interested in local food-ways and sustainable agriculture. She works for the Office of Sustainability at ASU working to get local food on campus, and with the Sustainable Development Department where she is planning the next High Country Local Food Summit, and conducting a survey on the feasibility for a local meat processing facility in the High Country.  

Josh Finch is a senior at USF who decided to take the leap from being a follower to a leader on campus this past summer. Josh has a passion for local food production because as it’s the foundation upon which a more just, fair, and sustainable economy must be built upon. Josh founded the student organization Student Community Gardens at USF, which facilitates the growth of a localization movement on USF’s campus.

Justin Flores started working at the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) in June as an organizer. The FLOC is an international labor union that represents thousands of migrant farmworkers in NC and throughout the Midwest.  Justin focuses on worker education, building union membership, and community organizing around the campaign to pressure RJ Reynolds to take responsibility for conditions in the tobacco fields of the South.  

HOPE Gardens functions as a transitional employment program for the local homeless population of Chapel Hill, NC. The Gardens, a hybrid urban farm and community garden, is in its first year of operation and will be employing three part-time homeless participants for wages this Spring. Mike Mian, a junior at UNC-CH, has been helping coordinate the project since its early phases of implementation. 

Rob Jones is a radical educator and food activist working to make sustainable food accessible and affordable by empowering communities to grow food. Rob organizes Crop Mob a group of young, landless, and/or wannabe farmers that works collectively and builds community within sustainable agriculture. He is a fellow with Good Work, a social entrepreneurship and community development non-profit in Durham and cooks and collaborates with community organizer/chef Vimala Rajendran in her community kitchen. 

Sally Lee, a former member of FLO Food at UNC, works for RAFI-USA as the Just Foods Program Assistant. The Just Foods program promotes a systems-based approach to a more sustainable food and fiber system by developing meaningful certification systems for organic and fairly produced products, evaluating new technologies, and educating farmers and consumers about the importance of biodiversity. 

Melanie Stratton Lopez is the granddaughter of migrant farmworkers, was raised in the mountains of Western North Carolina and currently works for Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF). In 2003, while attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she interned with United Students Against Sweatshops in the Dominican Republic and conducted research on the working conditions of garment workers. She coordinates the Into the Fields Internship Program for SAF.                   

Rudi Mansfeld is a UNC Professor of Anthropology.

Scott Marlow is the Farm Sustainability Program Director for the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI-USA).

Caitlin Norton is a junior Geography major at Virginia Tech and baker by avocation. She is an active member of Sustainable Food Corps and Oxfam at Virginia Tech.  She took a year off of school and worked with the WWOOF (Worldwide Opportunities for Organic Farming) program in New Zealand on small-scale, polycultural farms.

Tony Peele is a senior at UNC, with research interests on the intersection of Justice theory and food systems and institutional arrangements. He has completed research projects on Food Policy and Security in Tanzania, and is a leader on the UNC campus movement pushing for institutional support of community based food systems in North Carolina.   

Abbey Piner has worked as an Education Coordinator at Common Good City Farm, an urban farm and education center that grows food for low-income residents in Washington, DC and provides educational opportunities for all people that help increase food security, improve health, and contribute to environmental sustainability.  She also leads school-based programming for classroom groups and collaborates with the Green Tomorrows program that serves low-income adults and families through a ‘farm for food’ education program. 

David Schwartz is a senior at Brown University where he spends far more time organizing with the Real Food Challenge than he does in class.  Coming from a Jewish household where issues of economic and racial justice were common dinner table discussions, David came to the world of food justice and sustainable agriculture in high school and hasn’t looked back.  On campus he helped start a student garden, a local distribution scheme for local produce, and a campaign to redirect over $1 million of school food dollars to “real food.”  Other things David feels passionately about: playing dress up, cheap Chinese food, participatory education, immigrants’ rights, and the color blue (sometimes orange).

Sammy Slade is the co-founder of the Carrboro Community Garden and the Carrboro Town Alderman.
Kendall Singleton received her undergraduate degree in Environmental Science and Environmental Thought & Practice from the University of Virginia.  As an undergrad she organized UVa's first food waste audit, wrote a senior thesis feasibility study of UVa beginning a composting program, and founded the still-existing student and dining administrator task force Green Dining.  She worked as an apprentice at a sustainable family farm in Central Virginia after graduating in 2007 and has returned to Grounds as UVa Dining's first Sustainability Coordinator. 

Tes Thraves works at the Center for Environmental Farming Systems.

Jordan Treakle hails from the mountains of western North Carolina and is currently a fourth year undergrad at UNC Chapel Hill.  With an initial interest in environmental justice and sustainable agriculture, he co-founded the student group FLO (Fair, Local, Organic) Food at UNC in the Fall of 2007.  He now works for the Real food Challenge as the Southeast Regional Field Organizer and was a central planner for SYFAS 2010.
 Steve Wing teaches epidemiology at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and conducts research on occupational and environmental health.  Recent work has focused on health impacts of ionizing radiation, industrial animal production, and environmental injustice.  He is a founding member of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network.