Friday, February 24, 2012, 9:45 – 11:15AM

Just Food’s Food Talks are short presentations by five well-respected food professionals focused on varied food-related topics. They are meant to educate, inspire, and kick-off the first day of our conference in a thought-provoking way. Enjoy!

Speakers:

Jacquie Berger
Executive Director, Just Food
jacquie@justfood.org

Jacquie Berger has been the executive director of Just Food since 2006. Just Food makes fresh locally grown food available and accessible to all New Yorkers by connecting rural farmers, urban gardeners, and NYC residents. Through workshops, hands-on trainings, cooking demonstrations, and a commitment to food justice advocacy, Just Food continues to increase public awareness around the connections between healthy farms, healthy communities, and a healthy environment. Ms. Berger has dedicated her career to working in the nonprofit sector in the fields of urban agriculture, sustainable food systems, education and the environment. She received her MBA from Yale School of Management and holds a BA degree from Barnard College.

Tanya Fields
Executive Director, The BLK ProjeK
info@theblkprojek.org

Inspired by her experiences as a single working mother in a marginalized community Executive Director Tanya Fields created and founded the BLK ProjeK in 2009.Tanya used her experiences as an underserved, low income woman and mother to inform and enrich the work of several high profile local environmental organizations such Mothers on the Move, Sustainable South Bronx and Majora Carter Group. The BLK ProjeK seeks to create economic development opportunities that address food justice, environmental justice and public and mental health issues. By empowering underserved women of color through political education, beautification of community spaces, urban farming and holistic health programming, by creating equal access to these enriching experiences for under-served women of color, we strengthen and empower our entire society. For the last year, the BLK ProjeK has run quarterly Bronx Grub community meals. They recently brought the Bronx Grub series to the BMW Guggenheim Lab with over 125 visitors in an hour span. They are currently working with Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo to create an urban farm called the Libertad Urban Farm in the Longwood community in the Bronx and have foraged an formal relationship with Wassiac Community Farm in upstate New York. They were nominated for a 2011 Union Square Award and are opening a year-long community led farmers market in the Bronx — the Green BLK Market which has received funding to incubate site specific healthy food vendors. Tanya holds a Bachelor’s in Political Science with a concentration in Black and Hispanic Studies from Baruch College.

Joan Gussow
Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emerita and Former Chair of Columbia Teachers College, Nutrition Education Program

Joan Dye Gussow, Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emerita and former chair of the Columbia Teachers College, Nutrition Education Program, lives, writes, and grows organic vegetables on the west bank of the Hudson River. Long retired, until this year she still taught nutritional ecology at TC every fall. She is author, co-author or editor of five books including The Feeding Web and This Organic Life; in November, 2010, Chelsea Green published her latest book Growing, Older: A Chronicle of Death, Life and Vegetables.

Garrett Oliver
Brewmaster of The Brooklyn Brewery and Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford Companion to Beer
goliver@brooklynbrewery.com

Garrett Oliver is the Brewmaster of The Brooklyn Brewery, editor-in-chief of The Oxford Companion to Beer, and author of The Brewmaster’s Table. He is one of the foremost authorities in the world on the subject of beer. Garrett began brewing professionally at Manhattan Brewing Company in 1989 as an apprentice, and has been brewmaster of The Brooklyn Brewery since 1994. Since then he has become widely known for his flavorful interpretations of traditional brewing styles and as an avid and entertaining lecturer and writer on the subject of beer. Garrett has hosted more than 800 beer tastings, dinners, and cooking demonstrations in fourteen countries, writes regularly for beer and food-related periodicals, and is internationally recognized as an expert on traditional beer and its affinity with good food. Garrett was a founding board member of Slow Food USA and served a five-year term as a Counselor for Slow Food International, helping decide worldwide policy for the organization.

George Weld
Founder, Egg Restaurant & Parish Hall Restaurant
george@pasturemgmt.net

George Weld is the founder of Egg Restaurant and Parish Hall Restaurant in Brooklyn and Goatfell Farm in upstate New York.