Staff and Board

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A note about our board structure: Each of our five stakeholder groups elect two board members to represent them from among representatives of member organizations. In addition, the entire membership elects an at-large member. Board terms are for two years and each member can serve up to three consecutive terms. These guidelines ensures a balance of stakeholder voices on the board. Board members are not identified primarily by stakeholder group in the following list as the board, once elected, primarily functions as a group focused on a common vision with shared power.

 

Board of Directors

Sue Kastensen, Dr. Bronner’ s Magic Soaps: While growing up with her two children, Sue taught snowboarding, trimmed trees, co-managed a young natural foods coop, made snow and, in 1993, founded a natural body care company. By 2001, she had set her vocational goals on prisoner reentry and in 2005 she sold her business to Dr. Bronner s Magic Soaps, where her products were reformulated to become the first USDA certified organic body care. In 2007 she earned a bachelors degree in Individualized Learning from Viterbo University. Today she is the founder and director of Fair Shake, a web-based prisoner reentry resource center. She is also the president of board of the Viroqua Food Cooperative, represents Dr. Bronner s on the board of the Domestic Fair Trade Association and is the project and creative advisor for Fair World Project. She lives in Westby, Wisconsin.

 

Jason Freeman, Farmer Direct Co-operative Ltd:  Since December of 1996 Jason Freeman has been involved in agriculture first working as sales manager for a small Vancouver (Canada) based events and marketing firm, Wiseman Noble Sales and Marketing. At Wiseman Noble Jason was responsible for exhibit space, sponsorship and advertising sales for Wiseman Noble’s two biggest projects, the Commercial and Industrial Hemp Symposium and Commercial Hemp Magazine. Jason also founded Biohemp Environmental Technologies, the first company in North America to bring to market a line of certified organic hempseed foods; Mum’s Original, which is still on the shelves today. In March of 2001, after selling his shares in Biohemp, Jason founded Farmer Direct Co-operative Ltd., with three organic farmers that supplied hempseed to Biohemp. In 2009 Mr. Freeman was promoted from Sales Manager to General Manager of Farmer Direct Co-op. In the spring of 2010 Farmer Direct Co-operative become the first organization in North America to be certified to domestic fair trade standards. On the strength of the co-ops domestic fair trade certification, in January of 2011, Farmer Direct Co-op become the first organization in North America to launch a food brand that is 100% Farmer-Owned, 100% Organic and 100% Domestic Fair Trade. Founded in 2002, Farmer Direct Co-operative has grown to 69 family farm member-owners from Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba with over $6million in annual sales and customers in the European Union, United States, Taiwan, Japan and Canada. Mr. Freeman has sat on a number of industry boards and committees including the Organic Value Chain Roundtable and the Saskatchewan Organic Directorate.

 

Tirso Moreno, Farmworker Association of Florida: Tirso is general coordinator of the Farmworker Association of Florida. Tirso was born in Mexico and came to this country in 1971 with his family to do farm work. From 1971-1982, he migrated from Florida to Michigan harvesting apples and citrus. In 1982, he became the lead organizer for the Farmworker Project of the Office for Farmworker Ministry, during which time he and several other farmworkers initiated the Farmworker Association. Under his leadership as General Coordinator since 1983, the Association has grown from a local to a statewide organization with more than 8,000 members. Tirso is a co-founder and board member of the Farmworker Health and Safety Institute, and serves on the boards of the Bert and Mary Meyer Foundation, Southern Partners Fund, the Sapelo Foundation, National Immigrant Farming Initiative, and the Rural Coalition. He also advocates for farmworker and immigrant rights in national and international meetings, such as the United States Social Forum (2007), the United Nations World Conference Against Racism (2001), and the World Social Forum (2005).

 

Rosalinda Guillen, Community to Community Development: Rosalinda Guillen is a widely recognized farm worker and rural justice leader. The oldest of eight she was born in Texas and spent her first decade in Coahuila Mexico. Her family emigrated to LaConner, Washington in 1960 and she began working as a farm worker in the fields in Skagit County at the age of ten. Ms. Guillen has worked within the labor movement with Caesar Chavez s United Farm Workers of America and has represented farm workers in ongoing dialogues of immigration issues, labor rights, trade agreements, and strengthening the food sovereignty movement. She works to build a broader base of support for rural communities and sustainable agriculture policies that ensure equity and healthy communities for farm workers.

 

Joann Lo, Food Chain Worker’s Alliance: Joann Lo is the Executive Director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, a national coalition of unions, workers centers, and advocacy organizations throughout the food system. She graduated from Yale University with a degree in Environmental Biology and has organized with both unions and a worker center. In 2000 Joann was one of two staff who started the Garment Worker Center, and she organized with garment workers in Los Angeles who led a successful campaign against retailer Forever 21, memorialized in the Emmy-winning documentary Made in L.A. In 2005 Joann joined Enlace, an alliance of worker centers and unions and a year later became Co-Director. Joann is the Vice Chair of the Leadership Board of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council and is a member of the City of Los Angeles’ Sweatfree Advisory Committee and the Enlace Institute Advisory Board.

 

Aj Hess, New Orleans Food Co-op: Aj Hess has dedicated the past fourteen years to the co-op, fair-trade, and natural foods sector. Presently as the Assistant General Manager of the New Orleans Food Co-op, a young co-op in New Orleans Louisiana, Aj trains and supports a team of new buyers and other staff to run an effective, efficient, community-oriented and owned natural foods grocery store in the heart of a food desert. Aj loves working with fresh produce and their passion for farmworkers rights and food justice stems from their work with local farmers and producers. Aj s concern for workers and the environment led Aj to serve as the chair of the Product Issues Committee and the Sustainability squad at Central Co-op in Seattle, this work continues on in new ways at New Orleans Food Co-op. When Aj is not working to increase fairness, justice, and community control in the local and global food system, Aj is busy working to become a foster parent, while caring for a three-legged cat named Professor Hank Ravioli, and listening to Dolly Parton.

 

Grace Cox, Olympia Food Co-op: Grace has been an organizer, activist, educator, and even a printer. She currently combines her passion for food and justice at the Olympia Food-Coop, a worker collective, consumer-owned food co-operative in Olympia, Washington. While representing the co-op, Grace has been involved in the national promotion of the cooperative model and social justice.

 

Ernesto Velez, Centro Campesino: Ernesto Velez has over 12 years of experience on community organizing and social justice issues with the immigrant and migrant communities of southern Minnesota. He has been serving as the executive director of Centro Campesino since 2011; he has taken on the work of the Justice program and is combining the project efforts into one program. His work has connected Centro Campesino with national groups working for fair immigration reform and worker’s justice.

 

Marty Mesh, Florida Organic Growers and Consumers: Marty Mesh is an expert in sustainable agriculture. His work in the natural foods community started in 1973 and, in 1976, he helped start Bellevue Gardens Organic Farm which he was involved with for 26 years. Marty Mesh serves or has served multiple terms on the Boards of the Organic Trade Association (OTA), the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG), Accredited Certifier Association, Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI), Alachua County Nutrition Alliance, and the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture (now merged  and called National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)) among others. In addition to public policy work in the U.S., he has also worked on an international level, helping farmers and farm workers in developing countries to advance organic and sustainable agriculture as well as organic certification. He was named by a national publication as one of the top 20 people, among others such as USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan and Senator Patrick Leahy, who most influenced the development of the organic industry.

 

Staff

Erika A. Inwald, National Coordinator is a food justice advocate from Brooklyn, New York. She has worked with food service and hotel workers in four different locals in the UNITE HERE labor union.  Erika was a 21^st Class Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow with the Congressional Hunger Center.  As a national hunger fellow, she led an effort to strengthen and reinvigorate a local coalition of emergency food providers, helped coordinate the distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables to food pantries and hot meal programs, and built new partnerships with local businesses to help salvage more food for distribution. Erika has also done policy and communications work on trade agreements, GMOs, food sovereignty, and the Right to Water for the National Family Farm Coalition. Erika graduated with a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from Brown University where she wrote a senior honors thesis about whether food cooperatives in New York City can increase food access in low-income communities. She is currently working toward a Master’s degree in Food Policy from New York University. When Erika is not studying or working to make the food system more equitable, she can be found seeking out new foods to try, dancing, or playing soccer.

 

Louis Battalen, Evaluator: Louis’ primary concern is with the confluence of social justice and agriculture, in the field and with the pen. Brooklyn-bred, he homesteads with his family in a western Massachusetts hilltown, marketing primarily fruits, alliums, and eggs to food co-ops and restaurants.He has held various food industry gigs on the shop floor, in the field, behind the wheel, and as a union organizer, always advocating for political and environmental principles with an emphasis on organic agriculture and the collective and cooperative model. He serves on the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s Fair Trade Committee and is also is a member of the Berkshire Community Orchardists, the Greenfield Farmers Cooperative Exchange, and the Old Creamery Cooperative. He has been a public library director, and has chaired his state’s intellectual freedom committee.