The A-team

Also know as the Administrative Team or the National Team, these guys do all the back-end work to keep the campaign progressing: fundraising, training and recruiting organizers, maintaining relationships with partner organizations, and strategic planning.

Anim Steel, Director of National Programs, The Food Project

Anim Steel is the Director of National Programs at The Food Project (TFP). In Boston, TFP employs over 100 Boston-area teenagers from diverse backgrounds and grows over 250,000 pounds of produce.  In its national work, TFP works to build a strong youth movement for just and sustainable food systems. Anim holds a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a B.A. in Astrophysics and History from Williams College. Although his dreams of becoming an astronaut never came to fruition, he is more than happy spending countless hours working on bettering our food system.  He is also a fool for soccer and enjoys traveling back to Ghana, where he was born.
 
 

 Katie Blanchard, Student, Carleton College

Katie Blanchard is a senior Human Ecology major at Carleton College, out on the prairie-of-yore that used to be Northfield, Minnesota. At Carleton, she has spent the bulk of her time re-establishing the Carleton Student Organic Farm as a vital part of the non-chemical-industrial agricultural landscape of the area. She loves most things about the midwest and especially long bike rides through all its cornfields.


 

Devon Ahearn, National Programs Coordinator, The Food Project

Devon joined the Real Food Challenge national team in July 2009 after graduating from Princeton, where she studied public affairs and environmental studies.  After researching environmental justice policy for her senior thesis, Devon wanted to step outside academia and work with an organization that addresses environmental and social justice issues.  Her interests brought her to The Food Project, where she serves as National Programs Coordinator and manages various facets of the Real Food Challenge. When she's not working on, thinking, or talking about RFC, Devon loves to run, dance, and watch baseball.
 

Tim Galarneau, Program Coordinator, UC Santa Cruz Food Systems Working Group; Statewide Advisor, CSSC

Tim is a past Roots of Change Fellow who works as an education and research program specialist on social issues for the Center for Agroecology & Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) focusing on farm to institution, higher education, and regional food movements.  In addition to enjoying the delightful year-round bounty from the 25 acre CASFS farm, he finds solace in the company of committed colleagues and staff working to transform the food system!  Through CASFS Tim also coordinates the Sustainable Agrifood System Fellowship which works toward enhancing agrifood literacy and farm to institution efforts in California.  He also serves as UC Santa Cruz's campus Food Systems Working Group coordinator and advisor to campus farm to college efforts for the California Student Sustainability Coalition. From community food policy involvement to elevating the potential for farm to institution within higher education, Tim is a passionate advocate and resource for food based transformation.    
 
 

Marissa Grossman, National Programs Coordinator, The Food Project

Marissa Grossman has been working at The Food Project for the past two years as the National Programs Coordinator, mainly focused on the Real Food Challenge. She graduated from Princeton with a degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the spring of 2006, after which she left the country to spend a year in Tanzania, working with the African Wildlife Foundation. Her work at The Food Project has made her realize how much she cares about creating a healthy food system, and just how much she enjoys working on a farm. She is known to speak her own language, and while not at work, you can usually find her outside or hugging an animal (see photo).
 
 
 
 

Alli Reed, Student, UC Berkeley

Alli Reed is a senior music major at UC Berkeley. She comes to the Real Food Challenge from United Students for Fair Trade and a good deal of farmer/farmworker rights activism and organizing. She is also working on starting a student-run food cooperative at UC Berkeley. She gets really excited about a holistic revamping of the food system (one that includes everyone), using music for social change and community building, and dinosaurs.

David Schwartz, Student, Brown University

David is a senior at Brown University where he spends far more time organizing with the Real Food Challenge than he does in class.  Coming from a Jewish household where issues of economic and racial justice were common dinner table discussions, David came to the world of food justice and sustainable agriculture in high school and hasn’t looked back.  On campus he helped start a student garden, a local distribution scheme for local produce, and a campaign to redirect over $1 million of school food dollars to “real food.”  Other things David feels passionately about: playing dress up, cheap Chinese food, participatory education, immigrants’ rights, and the color blue (sometimes orange).