About
Our Editorial Team
Paula Crossfield is a founder and the Managing Editor of Civil Eats. She is also the Managing Editor and a Founding Director of the Food & Environment Reporting Network. Her reporting has been featured in The Nation, The New York Times online and Huffington Post, and she has been a contributing producer at The Leonard Lopate Show on New York Public Radio. An avid cook and gardener, she currently lives in San Francisco.
Jen Dalton is the editor of the Local Eats series, which features how cities all over the United States are rebuilding local food systems from the ground up and conducts interviews for our Faces & Visions of the Food Movement series. Jen co-produces Kitchen Table Talks, a local food forum in San Francisco and heads up Kitchen Table Consulting which provides strategy and communications services to promote and support sustainable businesses, local economies and good food. Jen is also serves as the Cheese Chair of the Good Food Awards and was the Programs Director for Slow Food Nation '08.
Twilight Greenaway is an Oakland-based writer and editor. Her articles about food and farming have appeared in The New York Times, NPR.org, The Guardian, TakePart, and on Grist, where she served as the food editor from 2011-2012. More at TwilightGreenaway.com and @twyspy
Adrien Schless-Meier is deputy managing editor of Civil Eats and a contributor to the Local Eats series, a column highlighting innovative efforts to create vibrant local food systems across the United States. She is currently an AmeriCorps member at the Multnomah County Office of Sustainability, working on food access issues in the greater Portland area.
Naomi Starkman is a Founder and the Editor-in-Chief of Civil Eats. She is a food policy consultant to Consumers Union and others, as well as a founding board member and the Strategic Communications Advisor to the Food & Environment Reporting Network. Naomi served as the Director of Communications & Policy at Slow Food Nation ’08 and has worked as a media consultant at The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ and WIRED magazines. She was previously a senior publicist at Newsweek magazine and was the Director of Communications for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). After graduating from law school, she served as the Deputy Executive Director of the City of San Francisco’s Ethics Commission. Naomi works with various clients on food policy and advocacy and is an avid organic gardener, having worked on several farms.
Interns
Arielle Golden is focusing on young farmer stories for Civil Eats. She graduated in 2010 from Wesleyan University and spent the following year living in India, working on issues of food security for women and children. Her projects included a report encouraging government supplemental food programs to take local economies and cultural appropriateness into account. She returned to the U.S. with a reinvigorated sense of hope about fixing our national food system. Arielle has written for the Nourishing the Planet project at the Worldwatch Institute and Global Circle, and loves crafting, cooking for pleasure, being outside, and braving new adventures. Follow her on Twitter: @airgolden0.
Regular Contributors
Helena Bottemiller is a Washington, DC-based reporter covering food policy, politics and regulation for Food Safety News (www.foodsafetynews.com and @foodsafetynews) where she has covered Congress, the White House, the Supreme Court and several high-profile food safety stories, including the half-billion Salmonella egg recall and the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Helena has appeared on BBC World and been featured in USA Today and her work is widely cited by mainstream and niche media.
Tom Boyden doesn’t have a biography, yet.
Tom Boyden is a dude cycling around the world, filming and writing about sustainable food producers along the way. Before he cycled through nine countries in the summer of 2013, he worked in all facets of the food system, from farm-to-table restaurants to a biodynamic farm. He's currently studying horticulture at University of Wisconsin-Madison and recently finished a study abroad in the Netherlands focusing on organic agriculture. His videos can be found on his website OrganicandUrban.
Andrea King Collier is a freelance writer a Knight Digital Media Fellow and W.K. Kellogg/IATP Food and Society Policy Fellow.
Temra Costa is a nationally-recognized sustainable food advocate and author of Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat (Gibbs Smith, 2010). She's been working to change the food system, from farm gate to plate, since 2003. She resides in Sonoma County, CA where she writes, gardens, and makes delicious things. Learn more about Farmer Jane and her work by visiting http://www.farmerjane.org.
Diana Donlon is the director of the Center for Food Safety’s Cool Foods Campaign in San Francisco. Cool Foods is harnessing the power of the Good Food Movement in service of a stable climate! A founder of Roots of Change, Diana is Board Secretary of Watershed Media and a regular blogger for MomsRising.org. She is also the mother of two, tall, teen-age boys who are always hungry for delicious, climate-friendly food. To learn more about how good food can help the climate follow Cool Foods on Twitter and Pinterest.
Cathy Erway is the author of The Art of Eating In: How I Learned to Stop Spending and Love the Stove, which was based on her two-year boycott of restaurant food and her popular blog on the topic, Not Eating Out In New York. She hosts the weekly podcast, Eat Your Words on Heritage Radio Network and writes about food, cooking, and urban agriculture for numerous publications.
Eve is the creator of The Garden of Eating, a blog about food--cooking it, eating it, and growing it. She has a legendary love of aprons and can often be found salivating over the fruits and veggies at one of the many farmers’ markets near her home in Woodstock, NY.
Chef Kurt Michael Friese is editor-in-chief and co-owner of the local food magazine Edible Iowa River Valley. A graduate and former Chef-Instructor at the New England Culinary Institute, he has been owner, with his wife Kim McWane Friese, of the Iowa City restaurant Devotay for 16 years. Named for his children Devon and Taylor, Devotay is a community leader in sustainable cuisine and supporting local farmers and food artisans. Friese is a freelance food writer and photographer as well, with regular columns in 6 local, regional and national newspapers and magazines. His first book, A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland was published by in August, 2008 by Ice Cube Press, and his lates book, Chasing Chiles, was released by Chelsea Green Publishing in March, 2011.
Amy Halloran lives in upstate New York with her family. She writes about food and agriculture, and is especially interested in the revival of regional grain systems in the Northeast. She blogs at amyhalloran.com and archives her work at amyhalloran.net.
Rose Hayden-Smith serves as strategic initiative leader in Sustainable Food Systems for the University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources division. She also serves as a 4-H youth, family and community development advisor for UC’s Cooperative Extension office in Ventura County. Her work focuses on providing gardening and food-systems education to youth, educators and community audiences. Hayden-Smith uses historical examples to influence current public policies relating to food systems and nutrition. She holds Master’s degrees in education and U.S. history, and a Ph.D. in U.S. history and public historical studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. A practicing U.S. historian, she is a nationally recognized expert on Victory Gardens, wartime food policies, and school garden programs. A Kellogg Foundation/Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy Food and Society Policy Fellow (FASP), she is the creator of UC’s Victory Grower website and blog.
Sarah Henry is a freelance writer who covers food people, places, politics, culture, and news. Her food stories have appeared in The Atlantic, AFAR, Gilt Taste, Grist, Shareable, and Eating Well. Based In Berkeley, California, Sarah has also written about local food matters for the San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, California, San Francisco, Diablo, Edible East Bay, Edible Marin & Wine Country, and Berkeleyside. Prior to covering all things edible she wrote social justice, health, and environmental stories as a staff writer for the Center for Investigative Reporting for outlets such as The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times Magazine. Sarah is the voice behind the blog Lettuce Eat Kale.
A native Kansan with Okie roots, Kate Hoppe's early encounter with worm composting solidified her passion for environmental work. She has contributed to the efforts of environmental and social organizations for over 15 years - including managing pr for Backpacker magazine's Get Out more tour, leading at-risk youth in environmental, service learning programs, and working on farms in the U.S. and abroad. Kate currently serves as a creative marketing and social media consultant for non-profits and green businesses, and plans to pursue graduate studies in public health with a focus on food security this fall.
Marcia Ishii-Eiteman is Senior Scientist at Pesticide Action Network North America. Her current work includes policy advocacy in support of a fair, clean and green food system and conducting public campaigns to counter corporate power in food and farming. Before joining PAN in 1996, she worked in rural development in Asia and Africa for 14 years. She holds a PhD in Ecology from Cornell University and was a lead author of the UN-sponsored International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development.
Katja Jylkka is a high school teacher and freelance writer living in New York's Hudson Valley. She has written for Civil Eats, Handpicked Nation, and NOFA-NY.
Nina Kahori Fallenbaum is an IATP Food & Community Fellow and the Food & Agriculture Editor for Hyphen magazine, an Asian American arts, culture and politics publication. She formerly worked for the USDA Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food program and for an environmental publishing company in Tokyo, Japan. Her website is ninaeats.com.
Jerusha Klemperer lives in New York City where she is a co-founder and the communications director at FoodCorps. She blogs for Huffington Post, WellandGoodNYC and her personal blog Eat Here 2. She also cooks up food and fun with Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant.
Tom Laskawy is a founder and executive director of the Food & Environment Reporting Network and a contributing writer at Grist covering food and agricultural policy. His writing has also appeared in The American Prospect, Slate, The New York Times, and The New Republic.
Ralph serves as the director of communications for the national non-profit Wholesome Wave, an organization dedicated to making the food system more equitable for everyone by improving access and affordability of fresh, healthy, locally-grown produce to historically underserved communities. Before joining Wholesome Wave he spent the last several years as the Project Director for the Johns Hopkins Healthy Monday Project based at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's Center for a Livable Future. Among his many duties there, Ralph helped translate scientific findings surrounding the complicated intersections between food systems and public health to the general public. It was at the Center that Ralph was able to hone his food policy communications skills serving as an advisor to both CLF and the national Meatless Monday campaigns. Ralph has worn many hats over the years. In addition to his advisory roles, he has written about issues ranging from food politics to obesity and health behavior change; served as the communications director for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production and the Berman Institute of Bioethics; and he spent almost 15 years as an Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist.
Jason Mark is a writer-farmer with a longstanding commitment to sustainable agriculture. In addition to Civil Eats, his writings on the environment and agriculture have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, The Progressive, Grist, The American Prospect, The Nation, Gastronomica, and Earth Island Journal, where he is the editor. When not writing, he is busy co-managing San Francisco's Alemany Farm.
Brie Mazurek is Online Education Manager at the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture, which operates the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers Market.
Tracie McMillan's first book, The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee's, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table, will be published by Scribner in 2012. You can follow her on Twitter at @TMMcMillan
San Francisco native Antonio Roman-Alcalá has been irrationally dedicated to urban sustainability since he decided that there wasn't enough "land" for all dropouts to go "back to". Since graduating from UC Berkeley, Antonio has been pursuing a life of meaningful enjoyment: teaching farming and permaculture at Alemany Farm and Texas Street Farm; playing drums and guitar in the band Future Twin; writing about the sustainable food movement as a perpetually critical insider; sharing his film In Search of Good Food; organizing the urban farm movement via the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance, and writing an ambitious treatise on human nature, environmental sustainability, and social transformation.
Stacey Slate is the former deputy managing editor of Civil Eats and community manager for the Edible Schoolyard Project in Berkeley, CA. She is currently helping to build edibleschoolyard.org, an online network to connect teachers, parents, and advocates of the edible education movement and to encourage them to share best practices and curriculum.
Jezra Thompson is a food justice advocate and community planner. She is currently the Food Access Director at DC Greens, a Washington DC organization working to build stronger and deeper connections to the local food system, ensuring that all residents can afford healthy, locally sourced food. She has spent time talking about food systems within government, nonprofit and academia. She tweets about urban planning and food justice here.
Kerry Trueman is a climate change activist/writer/consultant who advocates low-impact living, healthy eating, sustainable agriculture and related topics in a lively, non-wonky way. She has been a Huffington Post blogger since 2007, and contributes occasionally to AlterNet, Grist, Civil Eats, TakePart, and MomsCleanAirForce. Trueman also wrote the chapter on how to eat ecologically for Rodale's Whole Green Catalog. Trueman first began writing for the Financial Times, then became food/garden editor for Steve Case’s late, unlamented lime.com website and a sustainability blogger for Participant Media’s takepart.com website. In 2009, CREDO Mobile awarded her their “Activist Blogger of the Year” award in recognition of her influence as a blogger and advocate.
Amber Turpin is a baker, freelance food writer and former columnist for the Santa Cruz Weekly. She ran her artisan baking business, the Sweet Pea Cookie Company, for five years before working on the Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco. She is a regular contributor to Edible Monterey Bay and Civil Eats and currently lives, creates and writes from Bonanza Springs Farm, her property in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Her latest project is finding time to put up the harvest with a new infant. You can follow her writing at www.mylittleranchette.com.
Melissa Waldron is a community organizer, blogger, social media hound and sustainable food advocate with over fifteen years of experience in the non-profit world and local food sector combined. Melissa seeks to develop, promote and grow local food systems and is a 2011 graduate of Growing Power's Commercial Urban Agriculture program. As a founding member of New Haven Farms, she has helped to create an urban farm system that creates fresh food access points for those at risk for heart disease and diabetes. And she is also the garden coordinator of a program at the Clinton Avenue School that connects children from the nearby housing project at Quinnipiac Terrace to the school garden and offers after school gardening activities. Today Melissa is an internet marketing consultant for Triple Bottom Line businesses and is formerly the contributing producer of the long running Ruth Reichl series on The Leonard Lopate Show at WNYC, winner of the 2006 James Beard Award for Best Radio Show. You can find out more at www.fertilegroundusa.com, and www.lionstoothmedia.com.
Hannah Wallace writes about food justice, integrative medicine, and travel. She is a frequent contributor to Whole Living, Portland Monthly, and T: Travel, and her articles and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Salon.com, Vogue, Mother Jones, and the Los Angeles Times.
Kristin Wartman is a journalist focusing on the intersections of food, health, politics, and culture. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Huffington Post, and Grist, as well as in academic journals such as Critical Quarterly, The Black Scholar, Tikkun Magazine, and The New Labor Forum. Kristin is also a Certified Nutrition Educator and works as a nutrition consultant with various doctors in New York City.
A Square Foot Gardener, former WWOOFer and political operative, nonprofit junkie, and cafe Americano addict, Katie Welborn was born and raised in Lexington, South Carolina. Working with the Square Foot Gardening Foundation 2011-2012 sparked her interest in the ethics of food and opened her eyes to the power of local food, community gardening, and hunger issues that many families deal with regularly. Katie's heart is really for policy relating to homelessness and poverty, and she knows that access to fresh food is key in dealing with these issues. She is currently in Shanghai to teach English, volunteer with the NonProfit Incubator, and hopefully hang out with other expats while learning to cook Asian food. She spontaneously writes on her blog and tweets @KatieWelborn.
Mark Winne has 40 years of community food system experience which includes the position of executive director of the Hartford Food System and co-founder of the Community Food Security Coalition. He's currently an independent consultant for Mark Winne Associates which provides training and development services for food policy councils and other community food organizations. He speaks, writes, and trains on a number of topics related to community food systems and is the author of two books "Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardening, and Smart-Cookin' Mamas" and "Closing the Food Gap." Please go to www.markwinne.com for more information.
