Dr. Sarah Amin is an Assistant Professor and Director of Community Nutrition Education (SNAP-Ed, EFNEP, & CYFAR) in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of Rhode Island. Her research lies at the intersection of health promotion and community-based research. She works in partnership with the community to develop and test innovative nutrition education approaches that promote positive health outcomes and reduce disparities among racially and ethnically diverse families. She completed her post-doctoral training at Tufts University and received her PhD in Nutrition from the University of Vermont, MPH from Brown University, and BS from Wheaton College.  [Dietary Patterns Team]

Laura Barley is the Farm Viability Planner for the Massachusetts Department of Agriculture in West Springfield, MA, where she helps to manage the Farm Viability Enhancement Program and support succession planning opportunities. Prior to her work with the state of Massachusetts, she was a Program Manager with the American Farmland Trust, where she co-authored the 2020 Farms Under Threat: New England report that examines recent trends in farmland loss and launched an interactive Agricultural Viability Index website to analyze the Northeast regional agriculture system. This work will inform the development of the production milestones methodology for the New England Feeding New England project, including the analysis of current production levels, soil suitability, and future conversion of agricultural land. Laura will also contribute to connecting current dietary patterns to regional food production, as well as analyzing local food market trends. Laura has previously worked as an analyst for Organic Valley CROPP Cooperative, as a farmers market manager in Boston, and has completed the Tufts’ Agriculture Food and Environment masters’ program. [Dietary Patterns, Market Demand, and Production Teams]

Ramón Borges-Méndez, PhD, born in Puerto Rico, has worked in the US, Latin America, and Asia. He is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Community Development at the International Development, Community, and Environment Department at Clark University (Worcester, MA), where he is coordinator of the undergraduate Urban Studies concentration, and he teaches graduate courses on food systems, inequality, labor economics, migration, and globalization. He holds an MCP and a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Prof. Borges-Méndez is co-founder and Director of Development of Fundación Bucarabón in Maricao (Puerto Rico), currently Co-Chairs the board of directors of Worcester Common Ground Community Development Corporation, and he is a member of the Massachusetts State Council of the Conservation Law Foundation. He has occupied leadership positions in organizations and nonprofits such as the Massachusetts Endowment for the Humanities, Farm-to-Institution New England, the Latino Education Institute/WSU, the Mauricio Gaston Institute/UMASS-Boston, and the Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA). He has been a consultant for the World Bank, the US Dept. of Labor, The Ford Foundation, SEIU-1099 Health Care Workers NYC, the Brookings Institution, and the United Nations. His research has been published in CENTRO Journal, the Economic Development Quarterly, Local Environment, Agriculture and Human Values, and the Journal of Extreme Events. Prof. Borges-Méndez’s research has been supported by the USDA, The Marion Ewing Kauffman Foundation, The Immigrant Learning Center, Working Cities Challenge/Boston-FED, The Ford Foundation, The Leir Foundation/Clark University, American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies, among other organizations. [He participated in the Market Demand and Production Teams.]

Brian Donahue is Professor Emeritus of American Environmental Studies at Brandeis University. Donahue holds a BA, MA, and PhD from the Brandeis program in the History of American Civilization.  He co-founded and for 12 years directed Land’s Sake, a non-profit community farm in Weston, Massachusetts.  For three years he was Director of Education at The Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, and now sits on the boards of the Massachusetts Woodland Institute, the Friends of Spannocchia, and The Land Institute. Donahue is author of Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town (Yale University Press, 1999), which was awarded the book prize from Historical New England; and The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord (Yale Press, 2004), which won book prizes from the New England Historical Association, the Agricultural History Society, and the American Society for Environmental History.  He also published American Georgics: Writings on Farming, Culture and the Land (Yale Press, 2011), an anthology co-edited with Edwin Hagenstein and Sara Gregg. Donahue is co-author of Wildlands and Woodlands: A Vision for the New England Landscape (Harvard Forest, 2010) and A New England Food Vision: Healthy Food for All, Sustainable Farming and Fishing, Thriving Communities (Food Solutions New England, 2014). He and his family co-own and manage Bascom Hollow Farm, in Gill, Massachusetts, which raises beef cattle, pork, pumpkins, and timber. [Dietary Patterns Team Lead, Production Team]

Holly Fowler, MBA is co-founder and CEO of Northbound Ventures Consulting, LLC, a small, woman-owned firm based in Montpelier, Vermont and centered around food systems, outdoor recreation, population health, and community economic revitalization. She routinely supports organizations and institutions nationwide to identify and implement strategies that prioritize equitable development. Prior to starting Northbound, Holly served as the Senior Director of Sustainability & Corporate Social Responsibility for Sodexo North America, the world’s second largest provider of institutional food service. There she guided progressive operational and sourcing practices across all markets – corporate, academic, healthcare, leisure, and government. Holly holds a Professional Certificate in Sustainable Food Systems Leadership from the University of Vermont, a Masters in Business Administration from Babson College, and a BA from Bowdoin College. [Market Demand Team Lead]

Michelle Klieger is the co-founder of Helianth Partners, LLC a consulting firm that identifies and deploys innovations that create more equitable solutions in our agricultural systems, by creating the building blocks that are required to move the system from the current state to the desired future.  As an agricultural economist, Michelle uses her lens to examine on-farm profitability, rural economic activity, and local environmental metrics. With this understanding, she strategically considers value chain solutions that are needed to realize the desired outcomes. Michelle is a professional speaker, the author of The Demise of Free Trade, and host of The Grower and The Economist podcast. She is a professor of Economics at Bentley University and holds a Masters in Agriculture Economics from Purdue University and an MBA from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business.  [Market Demand Team]

Hannah Leighton is the Director of Research and Evaluation at Farm to Institution New England (FINE), a six-state cross-sector regional network that is transforming the food system by mobilizing the power of New England institutions. In this role, Hannah oversees FINE’s metrics project, manages internal and collaborative research efforts, and leads FINE’s efforts to measure the impact of farm to institution activity across the region. Prior to her work at FINE, Hannah spent several years writing about food, working in hospitality, and farming on vegetable and small-scale livestock farms across the country. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing from the New School University and a Master’s degree in Sustainability Science with a concentration in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. [Market Demand Team]

Ashley McCarthy is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences at the University of Vermont. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on meeting the food and nutrition needs of the growing population while improving sustainability and resiliency to disruptions in the food system. She’s particularly interested in the role that regional food systems could play in overall food system resilience and sustainability. Ashley uses a variety of methodological approaches in her work, including geospatial analysis, quantitative food systems modeling, and statistical analysis. She received her BA in Economics from Creighton University and MS and PhD in Agriculture, Food, and Environment from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. Ashley is located in Burlington, VT. [Production Team]

April McIlwaine is a MS candidate at the University of Vermont in the Food Systems program. She holds a degree in Biology from SUNY Purchase and was the recipient of the Women in Tech award in 2019.  She has worked on a number of urban organic farms and taught farm and environmental education to NYC youth through the educational non-profit City Growers. Her current masters project seeks to create a publicly accessible narrative exploring the history of land use in Burlington and the effect residual issues, such as soil contamination, have on community gardens and gardeners. Her work with NEFNE was for the production milestones team where she calculated the land use acreage data for the region. She also worked alongside Dr. Ramón Borges-Méndez and Dr. Eric von Wettberg to assess Urban Agriculture (UA) throughout the region including a review of UA’s socio-cultural benefits and identification of UA indicators present in New England.  [Production Team]

Christian Peters, PhD is the Research Leader of the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s Food Systems Research Unit in Burlington, Vermont. He comes to the USDA from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University where he taught in the Agriculture, Food and Environment graduate degree program for 11 years. He joined Tufts University as an assistant professor in 2010 and was promoted to associate professor, with tenure, in 2016. Dr. Peters studies the sustainability of food systems using computational modeling and through interdisciplinary research. He is interested in understanding how dietary patterns influence sustainability, how much food can be supplied through locally and regionally scaled systems, and how transdisciplinary approaches can help to design and study such systems. Some of his best-known work includes development of a framework for estimating land requirements of diets and human carrying capacity, and a spatial modeling approach for mapping potential foodsheds. His work is well grounded in the Northeast, but also national in scale, and he is a widely acclaimed researcher in food systems. He received his BS in Environmental Sciences from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and his MS and PhD in Soil and Crop Sciences from Cornell University.  [Production Team Lead]

Scott Richardson, PhD, MBA is co-founder and Partner of Northbound Ventures Consulting, LLC. He brings a broad range of public health, operations, finance, and strategy experience to his work serving the public, private, and philanthropic sectors. Previously, Scott was the Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives for Project Bread, Massachusetts’ statewide anti-hunger organization, where his responsibilities included identifying, implementing, and measuring the impact and feasibility of new projects to improve access to healthy food for underserved populations. Scott’s research on improving public school nutrition has been documented in several academic journals. Scott holds a PhD in Population Health Sciences with a focus on nutrition from the  Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, an MBA from the FW Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College, a BA from Rutgers College, and a Professional Certificate in Sustainable Food Systems Leadership from the University of Vermont. [Dietary Patterns and Market Demand Team]

Nicolas Rockler is an economic consultant specializing in regional impact measurement, modeling, and assessment.  He is highly experienced in the development and application of regional econometric, input-output, and hybrid models.  He has more than 35 years experience as a regional economist.  Since 2006, Dr. Rockler has been CEO of Kavet, Rockler and Associates, a Vermont consulting firm.  He has served on the staff of the Multiregional Planning Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).  While there, he conducted research on climate change, completed several studies for the Economic Development Administration on the long-run impact of public infrastructure investment, done research for the Joyce Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).  Current project work concerns the State of New England’s food industries and agricultural sector performance, evaluation of Vermont Capital Improvement Program, and development impact consequences of hazardous waste disposal in Western New York State.  Dr. Rockler completed his Ph.D. at MIT with his dissertation titled, “Regional Economic Performance and Public Infrastructure Investment.”  He received BA and MA degrees in regional science at the University of Pennsylvania.  Prior to attending MIT, Dr. Rockler was a senior economist at Data Resources, Inc. (DRI, now Global Insight, Inc.) and F.W. Dodge, both subsidiaries of McGraw-Hill, Inc. at the time.  Prior to that position, he was an economic analyst at Abt Associates, Inc. and an economist at HSMM, an engineering firm (now part of AECOM).  [Economic Impact of the Food System]

Scott Sawyer, PhD, is an Adjunct Professor at Pitzer College where he teaches an introductory course of food systems. He most recently was the research director for the San Diego Food System Alliance, where he helped to develop San Diego County Food Vision 2030.  He formerly worked at Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, where he contributed to the development of Vermont’s Farm to Plate Initiative. Scott lives in Southern California with his wife, daughter, and bernedoodle. [Economic Impact Team, Project Editor and Report Designer]

Sarah Schumann is the principal of Shining Sea Fisheries Consulting, a mission-driven research and education firm specializing in fisheries, wild seafood, and environmental information and decision-making. Shining Sea combines roots in the commercial fishing community with a commitment to sound science, public engagement, and systems thinking to support coastal and ocean environments and the fishermen who make their livelihoods in these places. Shining Sea’s business model blends contract consulting with pro-bono services to support fishing communities and their allies in advancing healthy fishery habitats and resilient seafood systems. Sarah is also a commercial fisherman in Point Judith, RI, the author of Rhode Island’s Shellfish Heritage: An Ecological History and Simmering the Sea: Diversifying Our Cookery to Sustain Our Fisheries, and editor of the online multimedia journal Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Marketing. [Production Team]

Dr. Joshua Stoll, PhD, is an assistant professor in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine. His research focuses on questions about coastal community resilience, ocean governance, fisheries policy, and food systems. Joshua is the co-founder of the Local Catch Network and has been working to elevate the role of seafood in local and regional food systems for more than a decade. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Bates College, a Masters in Coastal Environmental Management from Duke University, and a PhD in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from the University of Maine. Prior to returning to Maine, he was an early career research fellow in the Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere Program at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Sweden. [Production Team]

Dr. Eric von Wettberg, PhD, is an associate professor in Plant and Soil Science and the former director of the Food Systems graduate program at the University of Vermont.  He has studied the genetics and agroecology of a number of legumes over the past decade, with an aim towards improving the climate reliance of nutritious, culturally meaningful crops.  His work aims to preserve crop genetic diversity, introduce new crops to the northeast, and improve the sustainability of crop rotations and cropping systems.  He is keen to bring his experience working with the Vermont Land Trust, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, and the Vermont Indigenous Heritage Center to bear on providing farmland access to new farmers, and facilitating the production of climatically resilient and nutritious crops. [Production Team]