We’re thrilled to share that our editor Ariel Lauren Wilson, Lauren for short, has been selected as a 2018 Stone Barns Exchange Fellow! She’ll join eight other women at their campus later this year to “tackle challenges and identify opportunities in the food system” while using the farm and on-site Blue Hill restaurant as a laboratory. Thank you Stone Barns for letting us share the following press release:
POCANTICO HILLS, NY—Nine extraordinary women working at the intersection of climate change, food and agriculture have been selected as the 2018 Stone Barns Exchange Fellows. The Fellowship program was developed with the goal of creating a network of food system leaders who are equipped to tackle vexing challenges and identify emerging opportunities for systemic change across geographies and disciplines.
The Fellowship takes advantage of the Stone Barns campus in the lower Hudson Valley, NY as an immersive and interactive farm and kitchen laboratory and provides critical intellectual and financial support to emerging leaders. Fellows have the opportunity to live, work, learn and think together and to identify prospects for a truly resilient food system. Blue Hill at Stone Barns, the Center’s on-site partner, will extend learning to the kitchen and dining room, inviting the Fellows to engage with chefs, restaurant collaborators and entrepreneurs as they explore ingredients, dishes and topics that impact the health of our land and ourselves.
Stone Barns Center’s mission of changing the way America farms and eats requires a deliberate approach to cultivating the next generation of innovators and leaders. Now in its second year, the Fellowship is a core pillar of that effort and will connect a network of 100+ leaders in the food movement within 10 years. By bringing together leaders from the disciplines of science, agriculture, cuisine, art, journalism, business, policy and wildlife management, the Fellowship will activate a powerful, intersectional coalition for food systems change.
“We are thrilled to welcome these nine incredible women as the 2018 Stone Barns Center Exchange Fellows,” said Jill Isenbarger, Stone Barns Center’s CEO. “We all need to care about the connection between food production and climate change. These women are all doing critical work at that intersection with the goal of building a more resilient food system. We could not be more excited about this amazing group of powerful and accomplished women and the work they will do together here at Stone Barns and beyond.”
The 2018 Stone Barns Center Exchange Fellows are:
- Selassie Atadika (Accra, Ghana): recognized as a ‘Global Top 50 Plant-Forward Chef;’ chef and founder of Midunu, a nomadic and private dining enterprise in Accra that embodies ‘New African Cuisine’
- Katy Chang (Washington, D.C.): founder of EatsPlace, a culinary business incubator and capital fund that provides high-quality financial and development services to micro, small and medium-sized food entrepreneurs
- Amy Grondin (Port Townsend, WA): a commercial fisherman who specializes in sustainable food systems; Vice President of the board of Organic Seed Alliance
- Karen Leibowitz (San Francisco, CA): co-founder of The Perennial, a restaurant and bar dedicated to leading the restaurant industry toward a regenerative food system and Executive Director of its partner nonprofit, The Perennial Farming Initiative
- Nancy Matsumoto (New York, NY): writer and editor specializing in sustainable agriculture, food, and culture whose work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Civil Eats, NPR’s The Salt, TheAtlantic.com, and other publications
- Aria McLauchlan (Los Angeles, CA): co-founder of Land Core USA, an organization developing and advocating for federal legislation that would establish a new “Outcomes-Verified Regenerative Soil Health Program”
- Ariel Pasternak (Washington, D.C.): founder and CEO of pineapple collaborative, a company and a platform celebrating women’s relationship with food that has garnered an audience of 25,000 women and counting
- Kathryn Quanbeck (Davis, CA): chief operating officer at Emmer & Co., a pastured poultry company; Advisory Board member at NMPAN (Niche Meat Processor Assistance Network); former USDA livestock economist
- Ariel Lauren Wilson (New York, NY): editor, Edible Manhattan and Edible Brooklyn; programming director of Food Loves Tech, a first-of-its-kind consumer expo showcasing sustainable food and agriculture technologies and thought leadership.
