Emilie Aguirre
Legal scholar forging path for food equity >
Research
Meet 30 inspirational young people making the food system more nutritious and sustainable, advancing the goals of the UC Global Food Initiative.
The University of California Global Food Initiative addresses a critical issue: how to sustainably and nutritiously feed our world. UC is working to develop solutions to improve food security, health and sustainability locally, nationally and globally.
In that spirit, the 30 Under 30 Awards highlight inspirational young leaders who are making a mark in tackling the global food challenge.
Legal scholar forging path for food equity >
Research
Tech entrepreneur tackles ‘world’s dumbest problem’ >
Food Security
Compost queen >
Environmental Sustainability
Fighting hunger on Gulf Coast >
Food Security
Champion for student food security >
Food Security
Trash-talking, waste-fighting, garbage guru >
Restaurants & Hospitality
Improving nutrition worldwide with green superfood >
Agricultural Innovation
Training African ‘agropreneurs’ >
Agricultural Innovation
Preventing childhood obesity >
Healthy Communities
Changing menus, changing minds >
Restaurants & Hospitality
Food literacy evangelist >
Education
Educator connects farms to schools >
Education
Eliminating household food waste >
Tech in Agriculture
Developing natural pest solutions >
Agricultural Innovation
Driving the next Green Revolution with data >
Agricultural Innovation
A force for food justice and sustainable agriculture >
Agriculture / Global Impact
Crusader for reducing food waste >
Food Policy
Cooking up change >
Education
Uniting communities through nutritious food >
Social Justice
Doing good with coffee >
Agriculture
Finding sustainable alternatives to feeding the world >
Research
Agriculture without waste >
Agricultural Innovation
Advocate for ending global poverty >
Global Impact
Lighting the way for small-scale poultry farmers >
Agricultural Innovation / Food Security
Addressing food security for women living with HIV >
Food Security
Teen inspires gardens that feed needy >
Healthy Communities
Swiping out hunger >
Food Security
Making the case for healthy vending machines >
Research
Bringing fresh, local produce to schools >
Local Food
Redefining how coffee is grown >
Commerce
Emilie Aguirre
Research
Komal Ahmad
Food Security
Louise Bruce
Environmental Sustainability
Caroline Cahill
Food Security
Ruben E. Canedo
Food Security
Claire Cummings
Restaurants & Hospitality
Lisa Curtis
Agricultural Innovation
Elhadj Diallo
Agricultural Innovation
Kelly Dumke
Healthy Communities
Sophie Egan
Restaurants & Hospitality
Elaine Lander
Education
Chris Massa
Education
Brianna McGuire
Tech in Agriculture
Nandeet Mehta
Agricultural Innovation
Matthew Meisner
Agricultural Innovation
Fortino Morales III
Agriculture / Global Impact
Laura Moreno
Food Policy
Aviva Paley
Education
Esther Park
Social Justice
Kate Polakiewicz
Agriculture
Lauren Ponisio
Research
Samuel Rigu
Agricultural Innovation
Judith Rowland
Global Impact
Edward Silva
Agricultural Innovation / Food Security
Matthew Spinelli
Food Security
Katie Stagliano
Healthy Communities
Rachel Sumekh
Food Security
Joe Viana
Research
Tim Williams
Local Food
Tyler Youngblood
Commerce
Anya Fernald
Co-founder & CEO,
Belcampo Inc.
Rose Hayden-Smith
Editor,
UC Food Observer
Glenda Humiston
Vice President,
Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of California
Josette Lewis
Associate Director,
World Food Center, UC Davis
Michael Moss
Journalist
Janet Napolitano
President,
University of California
Jaspal Sandhu
Founding Partner, Gobee Group
Lecturer, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Naomi Starkman
Founder & Editor-in-Chief,
Civil Eats
Research and Policy Fellow,
Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy, UCLA School of Law
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Field: Research
Emilie Aguirre has dedicated her career to advancing solutions for our inequitable, unhealthy, unsustainable and un-transparent food system. At its core, her research aims to help inform policy dialogue and practical solutions. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 2013, Aguirre was awarded a Fulbright-Schuman grant and Harvard Knox Fellowship to Cambridge University to develop a novel methodology for researching the food system by combining both legal and public health approaches. Now at the Resnick Program for Food Law and Policy at UCLA Law, she continues to research and advance solutions for the food system, teaches food law, and has helped develop and launch a free legal intake and referral service for nonprofits and small businesses working to improve healthy food access and sustainable production.
Founder and CEO,
Copia
Location: San Francisco, CA
Field: Food Security
Komal Ahmad is the founder and CEO of Copia, a website and mobile app that connects businesses with excess food inventory to communities in need. Businesses request a pickup, and Copia sends a driver to deliver the food to one of the hundreds of shelters on the company’s platform. With the ongoing support and contribution from food donors, recipients, on-demand drivers and a dedicated team, Copia has fed more than 660,000 people and recovered more than 800,000 pounds of food, enough to feed the entire country of Luxembourg. Copia recently partnered with the NFL during Super Bowl 50 to recover more than 28,000 pounds of food, and feed more than 23,000 people in need (three times the homeless population of San Francisco).
Senior Program Manager, NYC Organics, NYC Department of Sanitation
Location: New York, NY
Field: Environmental Sustainability
In 2010, Louise Bruce transformed a vacant lot in Brooklyn into a thriving “compost-first” garden. Within weeks of opening, hundreds of local community members began regularly participating in the project by bringing their kitchen scraps and using the finished compost to beautify the local neighborhood. Inspired by the project, Bruce dedicated her early career to community-based composting.
Today, Bruce continues to work for the NYC Department of Sanitation, where she oversees the development and expansion of New York City’s organic waste management programs to meet Mayor Bill de Blasio’s goal of providing all New Yorkers with curbside collection and convenient local drop-off locations where they can recycle their food waste. She also serves as a member of the advisory committees for the Cultivating Community Composting Forum and the U.S. Composting Council’s annual conference.
Child Hunger Corps Member,
Feeding America
Location: Theodore, AL
Field: Food Security
As an undergraduate student at Willamette University, Caroline Cahill monitored more than 40 Japanese international students’ health profiles, promoting healthy lifestyles and food choices. As a graduate student at Emory University, Caroline worked with the Atlanta Community Food Bank and coordinated with various partner agencies to learn about the barriers these organizations encounter when trying to provide nutritious foods to their clients. She has completed three separate community needs assessments in Alabama, Florida and Mississippi. From these CNAs, she established goals and secured funding for new child hunger (school pantry pilot) and multi-dimensional community health initiatives (rural health clinic outreach combining diabetes education with healthy food boxes).
Co-Chair,
GFI Food Access & Security Subcommittee
Location: Berkeley, CA
Field: Food Security
Ruben Canedo, research and mobilization coordinator at UC Berkeley’s Centers for Educational Equity and Excellence, co-leads both the UC Berkeley Food Security Committee and the UC Global Food Initiative Food Access and Security Subcommittee. Canedo has established himself as a national expert on student food security and college campus programs and policies to address the issue. He established and currently coordinates the efforts of campus food security working groups at all 10 UC campuses, and is engaged in actively researching and addressing college student food access and security.
Waste Programs Manager, Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation
Location: Portland, OR
Field: Restaurants & Hospitality
Claire Cummings is a student activist turned garbage guru who now serves as the first-ever waste programs manager for Bon Appétit Management Company Foundation, the nonprofit arm of the food service company that operates more than 650 cafés in 31 states for universities, corporations and museums. Since joining Bon Appétit Management Company in 2012 at age 23, Cummings has been a force in making a dent in the 40 percent of food going to waste across the country. She has led the creation of BAMCO’s Imperfectly Delicious Produce program — an internal initiative to purchase produce that might otherwise go to waste.
Founder & CEO, Kuli Kuli
Location: Oakland, CA
Field: Agricultural Innovation
After experiencing malnutrition as a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger, Lisa Curtis founded Kuli Kuli with a vision of bringing the superfood moringa to more people who need its nutritional benefits. Kuli Kuli is introducing moringa to the U.S. market via Moringa Superfood Bars, Pure Moringa Powder and Moringa Green Energy Shots. Kuli Kuli’s products are carried by more than 800 retailers, including Whole Foods Market, Sprouts and Kroger.
For the past two years, Kuli Kuli has been sourcing its moringa from women-owned farming cooperatives in Ghana, where they’ve planted more than 100,000 moringa trees. Recently, Kuli Kuli partnered with the Clinton Foundation and Whole Foods Market to help reforest Haiti with moringa trees and develop the Moringa Green Energy shot made with Haitian moringa.
Program Director,
Dare to Innovate
Location: Kindia, Guinea
Field: Agricultural Innovation
Elhadj Diallo has been with Dare to Innovate since December 2013 and is now the program director in Guinea. He launched a pilot program in 2015 that trained 27 aspiring “agropreneurs” from different educational backgrounds. During this time he helped create the 5-month training curriculum and calendar, and led the training modules on Agribusiness Marketing, Agricultural Technologies and a participatory critical case study on banana production. Overall, they have now overseen disbursements of startup funding to seven businesses dispersed throughout Guinea. Currently, he is in the process of launching an annual agropreneur incubator program.
Assistant Project Director, Choose Health LA Kids, LA County Department of Public Health
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Field: Healthy Communities
Kelly Dumke is the assistant project director for Choose Health LA Kids, one of the nation’s largest investments aimed at preventing early childhood obesity among nearly 1 million children ages 0-5 in Los Angeles County. She works with researchers at UCLA to scale up an evidence-based curriculum linking nutrition education with parenting skills. She also leads an interdepartmental task force between the Department of Public Health and Department of Children and Family Services to develop mechanisms for addressing high rates of obesity within the child welfare system. Her team uses lessons learned from tobacco prevention policy to train communities on advocating for healthier food policies.
Director of Programs and Culinary Nutrition for the Strategic Initiatives Group at The Culinary Institute of America
Location: San Francisco, CA
Field: Restaurants & Hospitality
Sophie Egan is the director of programs and culinary nutrition for strategic initiatives at The Culinary Institute of America, where she works to help the food service industry make its menus healthier and more sustainable. She co-leads two high-impact year-round initiatives, in partnership with Harvard School of Public Health and Stanford University. She also co-leads two annual leadership retreats that convene high-volume food service leaders who collectively feed more than 100 million Americans per day. She serves on the steering committee of the National Fruit & Vegetable Alliance, works with Google, and supports the CIA’s Healthy Kids Initiative and more. She also contributes to the New York Times’ Well blog and has just written her first book: Devoured: From Chicken Wings to Kale Smoothies – How What We Eat Defines Who We Are.
Program Officer,
Food Literacy Center
Location: Sacramento, CA
Field: Education
Elaine Lander began volunteering with Food Literacy Center in 2013. In 2014, as the founder’s first hire, she joined the organization full time as program coordinator. She has increased programming from serving one school to eight schools through strategic community partnerships and comprehensive logistical operations. She now oversees hands-on food education for 800 students weekly. She works with community partners including the Sacramento Public Library to reach 20,000 kids with more than 300 programs per year. She oversees training and coordination of 150 volunteers and now leads the Food Literacy Academy. Following the 2015 program, 82 percent of children knew how to make a healthy snack and 73 percent of children agree it matters where our food is grown.
Farm to School Operations Specialist, Ventura Unified School District
Location: Ventura County, CA
Field: Education
Chris Massa began teaching children about food and agriculture in 2013 as a FoodCorps service member in Ventura County, California. There, he started a student-led farm at the University of California Hansen Agricultural Research and Extension Center. Over the course of 30 weeks, his program grew more than 2,000 pounds of produce that went to the students’ families, school cafeterias and a local food bank. He now works as a farm to school operations specialist, helping local farmers sell their products to school districts.
Co-founder and CEO, Foodfully; Junior Specialist, QBE Lab, UC Davis
Location: Davis, CA
Field: Tech in Agriculture
Brianna McGuire is the co-founder and CEO of Foodfully, a small business building software to eliminate household food waste. The Foodfully app syncs with store loyalty cards and scans receipts to track food purchases, sending users reminders when their food is most likely to go bad, and providing recipes for soon-to-spoil items. Foodfully is currently beta testing with more than 1,300 individuals. McGuire also has studied precision weather monitoring to reduce fungicide applications in commercial vineyards and currently works at the UC Davis Plant Pathology Department on modeling citrus and strawberry diseases.
Founder,
Pyur Solutions
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Field: Agricultural Innovation
Nandeet Mehta is an Edison scholar, entrepreneur, venture capitalist and a UCLA class of 2016 student majoring in history and minoring in global studies. In January 2015, he founded and became CEO of Pyur Solutions, a company developing nontoxic, biodegradable, plant-based pesticides, herbicides and insecticides for agriculture. While focusing on developing sustainable solutions to control pests in agriculture, Mehta became drawn to the subject of nutrition and its relationship to performance and health. This past fall, he co-founded SNAC, a student nutrition advocacy group.
Head of Data Science at Farmers Business Network
Location: San Carlos, CA
Field: Agricultural Innovation
Matthew Meisner is a co-founder and the head of data science of Farmers Business Network (FBN), a rapidly growing venture-backed startup with the mission of harnessing farm data for the benefit of farmers. FBN is assembling a massive dataset collected directly from farmers and their precision equipment. Meisner is at the core of the technical and statistical work that translates this big data into scientific insights that give farmers the power to achieve better yields. Data is the next frontier in agricultural productivity and Meisner is at the forefront of innovating to create this future.
R’Garden Coordinator
Location: Riverside, CA
Field: Agriculture / Global Impact
Fortino Morales is a Global Food Initiative team member and manager of UC Riverside’s community garden (R’Garden). He graduated from UC Riverside with a bachelor’s degree in environmental sciences in 2011 after having helped found the community garden, established the first student-run course, the Urban Garden Seminar, and ushered through a student referendum to fund sustainability engagement. Upon graduation, he returned to UC Riverside as its first R’Garden manager, overseeing the 3-acre sustainable community garden. During this time he won numerous accolades from the campus, city and state for his work in promoting food justice on and off campus. He has made the R’Garden a bastion for sustainable agriculture, living laboratory experimentations and community outreach.
Ph.D. Student,
Energy and Resources Group, UC Berkeley
Location: Berkeley, CA
Field: Food Policy
Laura Moreno’s work focuses on research and action in food waste measurement, prevention and disposal. She is a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley and project manager for a food waste measurement program of the Natural Resources Defense Council in Nashville, Tennessee. From 2014-15, Moreno conducted household-level interviews in Seattle and Oakland to understand the social, behavioral and cultural processes that affect how people, purchase, store, prepare and eventually waste food. In 2014, she developed a behavioral baseline for the food waste prevention campaign in Seattle wherein she developed and administered a survey to ascertain current food provisioning and food waste practices of residents.
Director of Programs and Communications at Kitchens for Good
Location: San Diego, CA
Field: Education
Aviva Paley is a social entrepreneur with professional experience in marrying a social mission with proven business driven strategies. In 2014, she joined with her business partner, Chuck Samuelson (founder), to launch Kitchens for Good (KFG), under the belief that kitchens can be social and economic engines for good in communities. KFG works to develop community kitchens that provide culinary job training for the chronically unemployed, while simultaneously transforming surplus and cosmetically imperfect produce into thousands of nutritious meals for the hungry. In just one year, they have grown the organization from two to 37 employees, operating a $1.5 million social enterprise catering company. Paley oversees all job training, hunger relief and food rescue programs, as well as manages the marketing and communications for Kitchens for Good.
Program Associate,
Healthy Neighborhood Market Network (a project of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council)
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Field: Social Justice
Esther Park has been a core part of the team at the Los Angeles Food Policy Council (LAFPC) since 2012. She is one of the co-creators of a groundbreaking initiative to build the leadership and business acumen of immigrant business owners in low-income communities to help them bring fresher, nutritious food to their customers. Through the Healthy Neighborhood Market Network, Park supports “mom n’ pop” store owners to develop healthy food action plans, access new resources and broker collaborative partnerships with local neighborhood residents. Her role is critical in reaching the Korean store owner base in South Los Angeles, not only ensuring cultural relevancy and language accessibility of LAFPC’s programs, but helping broker new cultural understanding and connection among Korean, black and Latino communities in South Los Angeles, where historic tensions pre-date the 1992 civil unrest.
Graduate Student/M.Sc. Candidate,
International Agricultural Development, UC Davis
Location: Davis, CA
Field: Agriculture
Kate Polakiewicz is an agricultural scientist specializing in sustainable production and extension services for small-scale producers in the developing world, with a background in fair trade certification and supply chain labor practices. Polakiewicz also helps lead the development of coffee education at UC Davis through the design of a new undergraduate course titled, “Good Coffee: The Biology, History, and Cultural Impacts of the World’s Favorite Drink.” This interdisciplinary course will provide students with an introduction to critical themes in agriculture.
Polakiewicz’s background includes a partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture through the UC Davis School of Education to train and engage agricultural teachers in applied experiential learning methodologies to amend degraded soil structure at a vocational school in rural Haiti. This year, the UC Davis graduate student will work with Catholic Relief Services’ Blue Harvest program in Honduras, which impacts hundreds of producer communities through watershed management of coffee growing regions, as part of a UC-USAID fellowship.
Ph.D. Candidate, UC Berkeley
Location: Berkeley, CA
Field: Research
As a native of California’s Central Valley, Lauren Ponisio has a personal connection to issues concerning the sustainability of agriculture, and her primary research interest is to make agricultural systems better for humans and wildlife. Ponisio investigates strategies for designing agricultural systems to promote biodiversity conservation, and the links between conservation strategies and improving livelihoods.
As a U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Science Foundation fellow, Ponisio led a meta-analysis examining the potential of alternative farming systems to contribute to global food production. This study was the first to definitively show that sustainable farming practices can improve crop yields. Ponisio popularized her work through giving radio interviews and writing popular science pieces. These pieces contrast paradigms of our current agricultural system of monocultures with more diversified alternatives.
Co-founder & CEO, Safi Organics
Location: Naivasha, Nakuru, Kenya
Field: Agricultural Innovation
Samuel Rigu is the co-founder and CEO of Safi Organics, a for-profit company in Kenya that produces and sells a carbon negative, organic fertilizer (Safi Sarvi) that helps rural farmers increase their farm yields by up to 30 percent and income by up to 50 percent. Their fertilizer, made locally from farm waste, shows a higher retention of water and nutrients over time versus traditional fertilizers, and also is slightly alkaline, preventing soil acidification. The product has additional environmental benefits: by selling and applying each ton of Safi Organics fertilizer, 1.1 tons of CO2 equivalent are sequestered from the atmosphere.
U.S. Policy and Advocacy Manager, Global Citizen
Location: Springfield, MO
Field: Global Impact
As U.S. policy and advocacy manager for Global Citizen, Judith Rowland works on the team supporting the U.N. Global Goals for Sustainable Development tasked with eradicating global hunger and extreme poverty by 2030. She helps to amplify the voices of millions of global citizens who take action and call on elected officials to pass policies that would improve global food security and access to nutritious food for the world’s poor.
This year, Rowland is encouraging Congress to pass the Food for Peace Reform Act and the Global Food Security Act, bills that would reform and streamline current food aid practices. The Food for Peace Reform Act would allow the U.S. to buy food directly from local, small-scale farmers for distribution within countries in need – helping to deliver life-saving food more quickly while empowering local businesses. The Global Food Security Act was passed by the House and Senate in early 2016.
Executive Director, Thought for Food; Co-founder, Henlight
Location: Davis, CA
Field: Agricultural Innovation / Food Security
Edward Silva is executive director of Thought For Food and co-founder of Henlight – a solar-powered solution to help small-scale poultry farmers. His current work for TFF focuses on a reciprocal value proposition project, developing a handful of tools that allow the global community to engage with an ever-changing food/agriculture industry in a more effective way. His logic is that millennials will need to take on the leadership for our food system in the next few decades, and it is important for millennials to bring solutions for that system. When not leading Henlight or TFF, Silva also supports a research project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to commercialize an energy optimization technology, with an eye towards potential applications in food/agriculture.
Resident Physician, UC San Francisco
Location: San Francisco, CA
Field: Food Security
Matthew Spinelli is studying the impact of food security on HIV treatment outcomes in women living with HIV. Food security has been studied abroad as an impact on poor HIV control, as well as vulnerable populations living with HIV in the United States, but it has not been studied specifically in women living with HIV. This research could pave the way for interventions to address food security for women living with HIV such as a comprehensive meal programs linked to HIV care and behavioral health treatment.
Founder & Chief Executive Gardener,
Katie’s Krops
Location: Summerville, SC
Field: Healthy Communities
In 2008, 9-year-old Katie Stagliano planted a single cabbage in her South Carolina front yard as part of a school project. It grew to be 40 pounds, and fed 275 people in a local soup kitchen. The rest is history. Today, the 17-year-old’s idea has flourished into a movement. Katie’s Krops now consists of 100 gardens all across the country, all maintained by local children of the community. Katie’s Krops is a nonprofit organization aimed at fighting hunger. Its mission is to start and maintain vegetable gardens of all sizes and donate the harvest to help feed those in need.
Founder & Executive Director, Swipe Out Hunger
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Field: Food Security
Rachel Sumekh co-founded Swipe Out Hunger as a UCLA student and is now executive director of the organization, which allows college students to donate excess dollars on their meal plan to fellow students in need. The organization now has chapters on four UC campuses with plans to expand to all nine UC undergraduate campuses. It has served 1.2 million meals across the country. Swipe Out Hunger was recognized by President Obama as a White House “Champion of Change.” The program’s impact has increased 10-fold since its launch four years ago, with 20 chapters on college campuses across the country.
Doctoral Student of Health Policy and Management at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Field: Research
Joe Viana, in close collaboration with UCLA researchers and nutritionists, implemented an evidence-based trial of healthier vending machines at UCLA, designed to increase sales of healthier items without compromising the bottom-line revenue from more than 30 trial machines. Results indicated healthier machines sold four times better than conventional machines, and that the trial machines did not lose revenue or profit. Viana’s work has triggered a review of UC-wide policies around vending, and spurred discussion around healthy vending at the national level with Partnership for a Healthier America, which works with the private sector and Michelle Obama to make healthier choices easier.
Program Manager,
Working Landscapes
Location: Warren County, NC
Field: Local Food
Tim Williams currently acts as program manager for Working Landscapes, a rural economic development nonprofit based in Warren County, North Carolina. His work focuses on building farm-to-table supply chains, primarily focusing on an effort called the Chopped Produce Initiative. Through this project, Williams oversees a seed-to-school effort that brings small family farm produce into wholesale markets while at the same time revitalizing the economic function of agricultural processing in downtown Warrenton and providing locally grown, fresh-cut produce to thousands of school students across the region.
CEO/Co-Founder, Azahar Coffee Company
Location: Armenia, Quindio, Colombia
Field: Commerce
Tyler Youngblood is the co-founder of Azahar, a Colombia-based coffee company committed to reimagining and redefining the way coffee is grown, processed and distributed globally. Azahar is now a line of single-origin coffees traceable to individual farmers across Colombia. He organized local and international financing to build a roasting facility in Colombia, allowing Azahar to keep the majority of the coffee’s final value in the country where it was grown. Today, Azahar and its 20 full-time employees purchase more than 400 tons of coffee per year from more than 500 producers, boosting their incomes by 50 to 70 percent while providing technical assistance to continue improving their farms’ operations.
Co-founder & CEO,
Belcampo Inc.
Anya Fernald is the co-founder and CEO of Belcampo Inc., a group of innovative, agricultural ventures in California and Belize, which strives to make good food both the old fashioned way and on a larger scale than ever before. Belcampo employs over three hundred people in total, with plans to grow awareness, availability, and production of sustainably farmed food through its operations of organic farms, butcher shops and restaurants, as well as unique, luxury agritourism destinations.
Fernald has been recognized as one of the 40 under 40 by Food & Wine, named a Nifty Fifty by The New York Times, appeared in a lengthy profile in The New Yorker’s “Food Issue” in 2014, and served as a regular judge on “Iron Chef America” on the Food Network for the 2009, 2010, and 2011 seasons. Fernald’s cookbook, “Home Cooked,” was released in spring 2016 with Ten Speed Press. Fernald is an avid consumer and producer of almost everything fermented, and spends her spare time with her young children, Viola and Theo.
Editor,
UC Food Observer
Rose Hayden-Smith is the editor/curator of the UC Food Observer blog, which was launched in 2015 as part of the University of California’s Global Food Initiative. She has been a UC academic since 1992; her research and practice focus on gardens, food systems and history. She has worked as a UC youth, family and community development advisor and managed the 4-H and Master Gardener programs in Ventura County. She also served as the director for UC’s Cooperative Extension office in Ventura County, providing leadership for a team of UC field researchers focusing on issues relating to agriculture, natural resources, and human health and nutrition. From 2010-14, she served as the leader for the UC Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources’ statewide strategic initiative in sustainable food systems. Her book, “Sowing the Seeds of Victory: American Gardening Programs of World War I,” was published by McFarland in 2014. She also writes under the name “Victory Grower.”
Hayden-Smith is a former W.K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow and the recipient of UC Davis’ Bradford-Rominger award (2013) for her career accomplishments in promoting agricultural sustainability. She holds four degrees from UC Santa Barbara, including master’s degrees in education and U.S. history and a doctorate in U.S. history with an emphasis in public historical studies. She lives in Ventura, California.
Vice President,
Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of California
As vice president for UC’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Glenda Humiston brings more than 25 years of policy development and program implementation supporting sustainability, including time as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia and several years as a consultant on environmental and agricultural issues throughout the western states. President Obama appointed her California State Director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development programs 2009–15. From 1998–2001, she served President Clinton as Deputy Under Secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at USDA. Humiston earned her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in environmental science, policy and management; a master’s in international agricultural development from UC Davis; and a bachelor’s in animal science from Colorado State University.
Associate Director,
World Food Center, UC Davis
Josette Lewis is the associate director of the UC Davis World Food Center. Prior to joining UC Davis, she worked in international business development with Arcadia Biosciences. Lewis spent 16 years at the U.S. Agency for International Development. As director of the office of agriculture at USAID, she worked with senior levels of the administration to launch a new global initiative on food security. Lewis serves on the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture’s advisory committee on Agricultural Biotechnology in the 21st Century, the Foundation for Agricultural Research’s Food Systems Innovation Advisory Committee and is a member of the board of directors for the International Life Sciences Institute Research Foundation. She holds a bachelor degree in genetics from UC Davis and a Ph.D. in molecular biology from UCLA.
Journalist
Michael Moss is author of “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us,” a #1 New York Times best-seller. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and won in 2010 for stories on contaminated hamburger and food safety. His next book, “Hooked: Food & Free Will,” is due out in 2017.
President,
University of California
Janet Napolitano is president of the University of California, leading a university system with 10 campuses, five medical centers, three affiliated national laboratories, and a statewide agriculture and natural resources program. She served as secretary of Homeland Security from 2009-13, as governor of Arizona from 2003-09, as attorney general of Arizona from 1998-2003 and as U.S. attorney for the District of Arizona from 1993-97. Before that, she practiced at the law firm of Lewis & Roca in Phoenix, where she became a partner in 1989. She began her career in 1983 as a clerk for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Founding Partner, Gobee Group
Lecturer, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley
Jaspal Sandhu is a founding partner at the Gobee Group, a firm that innovates for social impact globally, and a lecturer at UC Berkeley, where he teaches graduate-level, interdisciplinary courses on the innovation process. In 2013, he developed Eat.Think.Design., a globally unique course focused on the intersections of food, innovation and health. His writing on innovation has been featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, MIT Innovations, Fast Company’s Co.Exist and the American Journal of Public Health. He is now conducting research on the role of 19th century Chinese food entrepreneurs in the American West. Prior to Gobee, he worked with the Mongolian Ministry of Health on innovation in rural health systems as a Fulbright scholar, and for the Intel Corporation and the Nokia Research Center. He speaks Punjabi, Spanish and Mongolian. He received his Ph.D. in design from UC Berkeley, and his master’s and bachelor’s degrees in engineering from MIT.
Founder & Editor-in-Chief,
Civil Eats
Naomi Starkman is founder and editor-in-chief of Civil Eats, a daily news source for critical thought about the American food system, and the James Beard Foundation’s Publication of the Year. She is a 2016 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford, a founding board member of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, and served as the director of communications and policy at Slow Food Nation. She has worked as a media consultant at Newsweek, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ and WIRED magazines. Starkman is an avid organic gardener, having worked on several farms.