Our advisory board members have expertise and experience in a wide range of food systems and community development topic areas and areas of the world. (Members are listed in reverse alphabetical order.)

Rami Zurayk is professor in the department of landscape design and ecosystem management at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. He studied at the American University of Beirut and at Oxford University, UK. His current work is at the nexus of food, landscapes, and livelihoods. His proficiency areas include local food systems and sustainable livelihoods, sustainable agriculture and agroecology, food sovereignty and food security, rural community development, and civil society action.

Larry Yee recently retired from the University of California, where he was the director of both the Ventura County UC Cooperative Extension office and the UC Hansen Trust, an endowment for agricultural research and education that operates the UC Hansen Agricultural Center. Currently, he is a principle with Fairhaven Strategy Group. In 2000, he helped found the Community Alliances of Interdependent Agriculture (CAIA), a national organization for sustainable agriculture. This led to a one-year appointment (2003–04) as National Program Leader for Food Marketing Systems Innovations at USDA, where he worked on the Association of Family Farms (AFF). Cofounder of AFF, he currently serves on the national board. Larry is also past co-chair of the California Roots of Change Council and a board member of the Food Alliance and the Ag-of-the-Middle National Task Force. He is a founding member of the Ventura County Ag Futures Alliance and the Regional Civic Leadership Alliance. Recently, he was appointed to the Los Angeles Food Policy Task Force and the editorial board for the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture. He has an MBA in agribusiness from the University of Santa Clara and was a fellow at the Resources for the Future Institute in Washington, DC. Larry lives in Ojai, CA.

Mark Winne was the executive director of the Hartford Food System, a private nonprofit agency that works on food and hunger issues in Connecticut, from 1979 to 2003. He cofounded the Community Food Security Coalition, where he does policy communication and food policy council work. Mark currently writes, speaks, and consults extensively on community food system topics, including hunger and food insecurity, local and regional agriculture, community food assessment, and food policy. As a writer on food issues, Mark’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, The Nation, Sierra magazine, Orion magazine, and Yes! magazine, to name a few. His first book, Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty (Beacon Press), was released in 2008. Mark’s second book, Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart Cookin’ Mamas (Beacon Press), was released in October 2010. Mark also speaks to groups around the world on topics related to community food systems, food policy, and food security. He serves on the boards of several nonprofit organizations in his home state of New Mexico, as well as in other parts of the country.

Jennifer Wilkins is Senior Extension Associate and Senior Lecturer in Cornell University's Division of Nutritional Sciences. Her extension and applied research program focuses the implications of community-based food and agriculture systems on public health and diet patterns, environmental sustainability, and community well-being. She developed the first regional food guide in the United States, a consumer nutrition education tool that promotes locally based and seasonally varied diets. She received a W. K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellowship for 2004 to 2006. She coordinates the Cornell Dietetic Internship Program. She also directs the Cornell Farm to School Program, for which she received a Dannon Institute Award for Excellence in Community Nutrition in 2003. She directs the Cornell Farmers' Market Nutrition Program Outreach, in partnership with New York State departments. Jennifer has served on the Chefs Collaborative Board of Overseers and is an occasional visiting professor at the Università degli Scienze Gastronomiche (University of Gastronomic Sciences) in Pollenzo, Italy.

Dawn Thilmany McFadden is a professor and agribusiness extension economist in the department of agriculture and resource economics at Colorado State University. She attended Iowa State University and the University of California–Davis and is a former Farm Foundation Fellow for Rural Community Vitality.

G. W. (Steve) Stevenson is a senior scientist emeritus with the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current research focuses on business models for midscale food supply chains and on beginning farmer and rancher issues. Steve’s academic background was formed in the Midwest, through a bachelor’s degree from the University of Wisconsin and advanced degrees in sociology from the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota. Prior to joining the CIAS in 1989, Steve was self-employed as a beef farmer in southwestern Wisconsin and taught sociology at LaSalle University in Philadelphia. He is a past president of the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society and is currently the administrative chair of the national initiative on renewing an agriculture-of-the-middle. He also chairs the USDA multistate research project, NC1036, “Research and Education to Support the Agriculture-of-the-Middle.”

John Smithers is a professor and department chair in the department of geography at the University of Guelph. His research and writing interests focus generally on agricultural and rural community change, and more specifically on the capacity of local food initiatives and short supply chains to contribute to the sustainability of both the farm and community sectors. John has worked extensively in Ontario and has also conducted research on local food initiatives in New Zealand and Western Australia.

Ricardo Salvador is the senior scientist and director of the Food & Environment Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). He works with citizens, scientists, economists, and politicians to transition our current food system into one that grows healthy foods while employing sustainable practices. Preceding UCS, Dr. Salvador served as a program officer for Food, Health, and Wellbeing with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In this capacity, he was responsible for conceptualizing and managing the foundation's food systems programs that addressed the connections between food and health, environment, economic development, sovereignty, and social justice. Dr. Salvador holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in crop production and physiology from Iowa State University (ISU). He was an associate professor of agronomy at ISU, where he taught the first course in sustainable agriculture at a land-grant university.

Ken Robinson

Rich Pirog joined the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in 1990. He is the program leader for the center's Marketing and Food Systems Initiative and became associate director in February 2007. Pirog directs the Value Chain Partnerships (VCP) project, a multi-organizational effort that provides technical assistance to farmer-led food businesses in Iowa. Through VCP, Pirog leads the Regional Food Systems Working Group, which focuses on making the case for investment in local and regional food businesses and networks. Pirog is also the leader of the Good Food Network of the Upper Midwest, a six-state network funded in part by the Wallace Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Pirog’s research and collaborations on food miles, food value chains, local and place-based foods, and ecolabels have been publicized in magazines and media outlets across the globe, used by local food practitioners, and is often cited in books and college courses. In 2003, he received the Iowa Sustainable Agriculture Achievement Award from Practical Farmers of Iowa, and in 2004, he received the Iowa State University College of Agriculture Award for Outstanding Achievement and Service.

Scott J. Peters is co-director of a national consortium of colleges and universities called Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life. He also holds two positions at Syracuse University: professor in the Cultural Foundations of Education department, and faculty affiliate with the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. As a historian of American higher education, Peters focuses his research and teaching on the topic of higher education's public purposes and work. His latest book is Democracy and Higher Education: Traditions and Stories of Civic Engagement (Michigan State University Press, 2010). He received his undergraduate degree in education from the University of Illinois, and holds two graduate degrees from from the University of Minnesota: an MA in public affairs from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and a PhD in educational policy and administration.

Heidi Mouillesseaux-Kunzman

Joseph McIntyre is president of Ag Innovations Network, a California-based NGO that leads collaborations between agriculture, environmental, health, and community interests to improve the food system. Trained as both an economist and an organization development professional, his focus is on sophisticated change processes that engage food system leaders.

Ken Meter is president of Crossroads Resource Center and a leading food system analyst. His work integrates market analysis, business development, systems thinking, and social concerns. Ken serves as a consultant to the USDA, the EPA, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, and manages the grant review panel for USDA Community Food Projects Competitive Grants Program. Ken is an associate of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, and has taught the “Economic History of U.S. Agriculture” at the University of Minnesota and graduate-level Microeconomics at the Harvard Kennedy School. As a member of the American Evaluation Association, Meter is active in the Systems Technical Interest Group and wrote a chapter entitled “Systems Concepts in Evaluation: An Expert Anthology.” He also writes occasionally for Successful Farming magazine, Edible Twin Cities, Grist, and Cooking Up a Story.

Larry Lev holds a doctorate from Michigan State University and is a professor and extension specialist in the department of agricultural and resource economics at Oregon State University. His work focuses on developing innovative research and marketing programs that address the needs of Oregon’s smaller-scale farmers and support the strengthening of local and regional food systems. Larry teaches undergraduate courses in agricultural policy and agricultural marketing.

Richard Kiely currently serves as the director of Engaged Learning + Research at Cornell University. In 2002, he received his PhD from Cornell University, and in 2005 was recognized nationally as a John Glen Scholar in Service-Learning for his longitudinal research that led to the development of a transformative service-learning model. From 2002 to 2006, he was an assistant professor in the Department of Lifelong Education, Policy and Administration at the University of Georgia, where he taught courses on community development, qualitative research, (global) service-learning, program planning, and learning theory. His research focuses primarily on institutional models that foster sustainable campus-community partnerships, as well as the learning processes and outcomes that occur in service-learning courses and community-based research programs.

Anupama Joshi is co-director of the National Farm to School Network, based at the Center for Food & Justice, a division of the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute at Occidental College. Since 2002, Ms. Joshi has been helping build a movement of farm-to-school projects across the country. Ms. Joshi has over 15 years of experience working on nutrition, agriculture, and food systems issues in various countries around the world. She has worked with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, Thailand; the Pesticide Action Network; and consulted with various nonprofit organizations in Asia. She has presented at conferences and workshops, including those organized by the School Nutrition Association, Society for Nutrition Education, Community Food Security Coalition, California Nutrition Network, American Public Health Association, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Food and Society Networking Conference. She is a past board member of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and is a member of the Society for Nutrition Education. She holds an master's in food & nutrition from the Maharaja Sayajirao University in Baroda, India. Joshi is the co-author of an upcoming book on food justice.

John Ikerd is professor emeritus of agricultural economics, University of Missouri, Columbia. John was raised on a small dairy farm in southwest Missouri and received his BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from the University of Missouri. He worked in private industry for a time and spent 30 years in various professorial positions at North Carolina State University, Oklahoma State University, University of Georgia, and the University of Missouri before retiring in 2000. Since retiring, he spends most of his time writing and speaking on issues related to sustainability with an emphasis on economics and agriculture. Ikerd is author of Sustainable Capitalism, A Return to Common Sense, Small Farms are Real Farms, and Crisis and Opportunity: Sustainability in American Agriculture. More complete background information and selected writings are available at web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj.

Shermain Hardesty is an extension economist in the department of agricultural and resource economics, University of California–Davis. She also serves as director of the University of California’s Small Farm Program. She is responsible for research, education, and outreach programs involving alternative food marketing systems, small farms, and cooperatives. Her current projects relate to food distribution systems and producers’ costs to comply with various regulations.

Bruce Gregory operates a small, diverse, certified organic farm with his wife on San Juan Island in Washington State, where they raise lamb, fruit crops, perennial nursery stock, honey, and various other crops. Bruce also does farm and forest resource planning for the San Juan Islands Conservation District. A graduate of Boise State University and Western Washington University, Bruce serves on the board of directors of Island Grown Farmer’s Cooperative, a nonprofit livestock cooperative that, along with the Lopez Community Land Trust, helped create, build, and now operate the first USDA-inspected mobile slaughter unit in the U.S. Bruce also serves on various other boards, such as the San Juan County Economic Development Council, San Juan County Ag. Resource Committee and the Northwest Agricultural Business Center. He is a graduate of the statewide Washington State University/Center for Holistic Management/Kellogg Foundation four-year program in holistic management training, consensus building, and micro-enterprise development. Bruce also has volunteered abroad for the ACDI/VOCA/Winrock International Farmer-to-Farmer Program.

Joanna Green is director of the Groundswell Center for Local Food & Farming in Ithaca, New York, which offers farm-based education and training programs for beginning farmers, students, and community members. Before retiring from Cornell University in 2009, she served as Extension Associate with Cornell’s Small Farms Program; Community, Food and Agriculture Program; and Farming Alternatives Program. She is the coauthor of Growing Home: A Guide to Reconnecting Agriculture, Food and Communities, as well as coauthor of the award-winning publication Farming Alternatives: A Guide to Evaluating the Feasibility of New Farm-Based Enterprises. She produces much of her family's food on a 2-acre homestead farm in Enfield, NY.

Gilbert Gillespie (Ph.D., Sociology) retired in June 2009 from the department of development sociology at Cornell University. As a researcher, staff in the Cornell Community, Food, and Agriculture Program, and social movement participant, he has worked to support more civic forms of local food system social “infrastructure,” including farmers’ markets, small-scale food processors, start-up farms, and organizations supporting agriculture and food based community development. His recent research projects have included a study on fostering community capacity through developing indicators of agricultural viability. Undergraduate courses that he taught include “agriculture, food, and society” and “environment and society.”

Julia Freedgood is managing director of farmland and communities at American Farmland Trust, where she leads AFT's farmland protection and Growing Local initiatives. She has a master's degree from Tufts University in urban and environmental policy and planning and has worked on sustainable agriculture, community development, and land use and conservation issues for 30 years.

Cornelia Butler Flora is the Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Sociology at Iowa State University. She is part of the evaluation team for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Food and Fitness Initiative in Northeast Iowa. She is part of a participatory native food research program on the Hopi/Tewa reservation, and is part of a research/outreach team developing immigrants as sustainable farmers to contribute to sustainable local food systems in rural Iowa. She is a past president of the Rural Sociological Society, the Society for Food and Human Values, and the Community Development Society. She serves on a number of governing boards, including that of Winrock, International and CONDESAN (Consortium for the Sustainable Development of the Andean Region). She consults with the World Bank, USAID, and UNIFEM on issues of sustainability and good. Her recent books include Communities and Agroecosystems and Rural Communities: Legacy and Change, 3rd edition. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Mary Jo Dudley is a faculty member in the Department of Development Sociology and director of the Cornell Farmworker Program at Cornell University. As director of the program, her work focuses on improving the living and working conditions of farmworkers and their families by educating farmworkers and employers on health, safety, cultural, and immigration issues, and by conducting research that examines the contributions of farmworkers to the economic and social fabric of New York state. She directs a summer internship program through which Cornell and other students conduct research, prepare educational materials, and conduct trainings with farmworkers. She was awarded the 2012 White House Champion of Change Cesar Chavez Legacy Award. She is also a founding member of the Tompkins County Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, and is a member of the New York State Governor’s Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force. In 2010 she received the James A. Perkins Prize for Interracial Understanding and Harmony, and the Kaplan Family Distinguished Faculty Fellow in Service-Learning Award, both from Cornell University.

Cheryl Danley is a Food and Community Fellow and Food System Specialist with the Center for Regional Food Systems at Michigan State University. Cheryl's current areas of focus include community food assessment, local food councils, school food value chains, and equity for socially disadvantaged and underrepresented groups in the food system. Previously, Cheryl provided technical assistance to the Kellogg Foundation Food and Fitness initiative. She was the assistant director of the Partnerships for Food Industry Development — Fruits & Vegetables at MSU. Trained as an agricultural economist, Cheryl has broad international experience in community development, agricultural marketing, and natural resource management and policy. Her vision for the U.S. food system is one in which people of color participate as experts and resource people in formulating and implementing good food policy.

David Conner is an assistant professor in the department of community development and applied economics at the University of Vermont. He grew up in central Pennsylvania and holds a doctorate in agricultural economics from Cornell and a master's in extension education from the University of Vermont. His interests span the economics of sustainable food systems from farm to fork. He lives in Vermont, with his wife and two children, and in his spare time enjoys spending time with his family, making music, and gardening.

Nevin Cohen is an assistant professor of environmental studies at The New School, where he teaches courses in urban planning and food systems. He serves as co-chair of the Tishman Environment and Design Center, the interdisciplinary environmental research and education center at The New School, and home to the university’s innovative bachelor's program in environmental studies, which emphasizes urban ecosystems, sustainable design, and public policy. Dr. Cohen’s current research focuses on urban food policy, particularly innovative planning strategies to support food production in the urban and peri-urban landscape, public policies to engage citizens in sustainable food production, planning and food access, and civic agriculture in cities and suburbs. He has a doctorate in urban planning from Rutgers University, a master's degree in city and regional planning from University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor's from Cornell University.

Pierre Clavel is a former professional planner and professor emeritus of city and regional planning, Cornell University. His research and writing has been on planning and community development, administration, and politics — with particular application to progressive cities like Hartford, Cleveland, Berkeley, Santa Monica, Burlington, Chicago, and Boston, as well as community development in Youngstown, Ohio, and Maine. His books include The Progressive City (1986), Reinventing the City: Equity Planners Tell Their Stories (with Norman Krumholz) (1994); and Activists in City Hall: The Progressive Response to the Reagan Era (2010). Progressive Cities received the ACSP Paul Davidoff Award. He now writes for Progressive Planning, the magazine of Planners Network, and for its website and blog at http://www.progressivecities.org. Clavel retired from Cornell in 2010, but also continues his work by doing oral histories of progressive planners. By transcribing and writing, he intends to contribute to a history that might not otherwise be written.

Kate Clancy is a food systems consultant, senior fellow at the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture, and visiting scholar in the Center for a Livable Future at the School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University. She has focused on food systems in positions with several universities, nonprofits, and the federal government.

Laura Brown is a community and economic development educator with the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension in rural Crawford County. She has worked for nonprofit organizations in community food systems development for the past decade. She attended Clark University and holds a master's degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.