Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council

Fluent in advanced research techniques & statistical methods. Skilled at performance management and measurement. Trained in group facilitation & inclusivity. Adept at managing databases & social media outlets. Comprehensive learner and patient teacher. Celebrated for written and oral communications. Trained to listen. Lover of artistic creative expression. Enthusiast of food & agriculture policy, environmental & social justice and social innovations & technology.

Megan Bradley is a Senior Program Manager at Share Our Strength.  She works on the Cooking Matters Program to help support the statewide team. She is a Registered Dietitian and graduate of Johnson & Wales University with degrees in the Culinary Arts and Culinary Nutrition. She has experience working in professional kitchens as well as working as a private chef and nutrition consultant. Megan believes that all people should have access to healthy, delicious and sustainable food.

Lisa's passion for ecological conservation led to a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science with a co-major in Biology from Creighton University in 1997.  Since then she has served successfully in various positions including: seasonal park ranger for Colorado State Parks; chemist; NEPA implementation and environmental permitting specialist; and, air quality compliance specialist for a power production and transmission association. Lisa's growing passions for public health and nutrition, food system resiliency, and urban agriculture later led her to pursue a Master in Landscape Architecture from the University of Colorado Denver in 2010, and the appointment to be co-chair of the Food Production Working Group of the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council in 2016. Her hobbies include snowboarding, sailing, walking my dog (or vice versa), and connecting with people.

Reuben is responsible for Sustainability and Strategic Partnerships at Metro Caring, a local hunger relief center. While spending a decade in social work, he began to understand the importance of access to affordable and healthful food for all. His passion for growing food at home led to starting community gardens which then led to farming for different entities, such as Denver Public Schools.  Here he learned of the complications of making urban agriculture succeed, assisting in private and public partnerships as well as for-profit and non-profit collaborations. While at Metro Caring, he has provided leadership in programming areas including food access, food waste reduction, and nutrition and gardening education.  Reuben is a former Rocky Mountain Farmers’ Union fellow, and currently sits on the board for a new agriculture-based faith community called The Land. He is also on the board of Future Pointe, consulting and developing integrated solutions for food waste statewide.

Anne is the Healthy Food Program Manager for Colorado Enterprise Fund. In this role, Anne develops, manages and promotes CEF’s Healthy Food Financing (HFF) Program providing access to capital for small businesses serving low income communities in Colorado. Anne is also involved with the Community Wealth Building Network of Metro Denver working to create economic development options that sustain all communities and is on the board of Nourish Community Market, a start-up food co-op in Northeast Denver/Northwest Aurora. Prior to joining CEF in 2015, Anne was a consultant with Opportunity Finance Network in Philadelphia, a national association of community development financial institutions that invest in programs benefiting low-income, low-wealth, and other disadvantaged communities. Her consulting work supporting healthy food access includes community assessments, program evaluations, grant reporting and strategic planning. Anne earned her Master of City Planning degree in community and economic development from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and her Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in Ohio.

"If you have food on your table with friends joining around, you are truly rich." Patti's grandfather described this richness" that she would like for all Denver families--regardless of zip code, age, ethnicity or color. Patti brings a wealth of experience to the SFPC: 10+ years writing/speaking on community-based participatory research (CBPR), 10+ years university/graduate-level teaching (Social Work), 20+ years organizational development and community bridge-building. Patti lives/works in NE Denver. She is a board member/leader in Taking Neighborhood Health to Heart, Inc., a resident-led 501(c)3 non-profit engaged in CBPR.

Jennifer Wieczorek Moreland is the Healthy Eating and Active Living, Chronic Disease Manager at Denver Public Health. She manages projects and staff focused on reducing health disparities through the adoption of healthy eating and active living policy, systems and environment changes.  She developed a collaboration of six Denver metro health departments representing seven counties, with the aim to adopt healthy food and beverage policies and practices in public venues.  Additionally, she is involved with efforts to screen and refer patients for food insecurity as well as park prescriptions. Mrs. Moreland also served in Peace Corps Nepal, training health workers and implementing economic development projects. She has a Masters of Public Health with a focus on International Health from Tulane University.

Tristan Sanders is a manager in the Community Health division of Denver Environmental Health. He currently leads division wide goals to increase the number of healthy environments in Denver and to incorporate health into all policies, plans, processes and projects. Tristan previously spent 8 years with Kaiser Permanente Colorado in the Institute for Health Research and the Community Benefit and Relations departments where he managed a grant portfolio of over 20 non-profit and government entities totaling more than $3M in strategic investments towards active transportation planning and policy development.  He also coordinated evaluation efforts for all Community Benefit and Relations investments and programmatic work related to the Kaiser Permanente Community Health Needs Assessment Implementation Strategy. He earned a Masters of Public Health from the University of Colorado-Denver with a focus in Health Systems, Management and Policy and has lived in Denver for the last 10 years.

Blake Angelo is Denver’s first Manager of Food Systems Development. Located in the Office of Economic Development, Mr. Angelo is responsible for supporting food-related business and community development efforts across the city with a particular focus in supporting a balanced approach to healthy food access, mid-skills food job creation, and the expansion of local food businesses in target neighborhoods. Working closely with the SFPC, he is also managing the creation of Denver’s first strategic plan for food systems development: the Denver Food Plan. Angelo is a Denver-native with a track record of supporting hundreds of food and farm-related businesses. He understands that strong food systems require strong food businesses and strong multidisciplinary partners. Prior to this position, Angelo worked as a business and organizational development consultant, was the Director of the Beanstalk Foundation, and served as the first specialist in Urban Agriculture for Colorado State University Extension in Denver and Jefferson counties. He has a master’s degree in Public Health and a bachelor’s degree in Evolutionary and Ecological Biology.

Analiese Hock is a city planner with Community Planning and Development. With a diverse education and the mindset of building community, Analiese brings a unique people focused approach into the technical and social aspects of city planning and design. Analiese works on a variety of long range planning and design projects for the City of Denver. Through her love of food and culinary arts, she has discovered that food serves at the foundation of building and celebrating communities. At events such as CollaborEAT, she often challenges people to redefine how we perceive and use the public realm. And to reclaim these places for people; to eat, to celebrate, to play and to simply connect with one another, building the community that is our city.
 

In 1977 Joanne co-founded the Three Tomatoes Catering Companies, a full service catering organization. Passionately committed to providing “from scratch” beautiful food served at myriad events on the Front Range, she and her partner sold the business after 38 entrepreneurial years. She has served on the boards of Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver Film Society and the Woman’s Presidents Organization.

Currently she is volunteer, dilettante, activist and concerned citizen. Denver has been her home since 1964. The city has grown exponentially since then. Her dream for this City is that there would be a garden in every yard and vacant lot, and that we could get back to a time like the Victory Garden era when fresh food was cultivated by individual citizens and shared freely in their communities.

Along with her husband, they proudly grow organic vegetables from seed in their front yard which they share with neighbors and family. Her husband holds a board position for Denver Urban Gardens. Drawing, cooking and preserving the bounty of her garden fills her time, and sharing beautiful meals fulfills her passion. 

Lauren Duncan is the Abandoned Mine Restoration Project Manager for Trout Unlimited based in Denver, Colorado. She has received a B.S. in Environmental Science from the University of Denver and an M.S. in Environmental Science and Engineering from the Colorado School of Mines.  Prior to coming to Trout Unlimited, Lauren worked for various public and private entities in sustainable operations, water quality and water resources.  Lauren’s interests in healthy cooking, food access and environmental sustainability led her to volunteering with Denver’s Sustainable Food Policy Council in 2015 and she joined as a full member in 2016. 

Dan is a Denver native. As a city kid, he was disconnected from agriculture and food producers. It wasn’t until college that he started to think critically about where my food came from. In college, he studied specialty crop production and sustainable development. After college, Dan had an internship at multiple small scale vegetable and animal operations, then returned to school to earn a Masters Degree at CSU in Fort Collins where he studied manure, compost, and cover cropping in vegetable systems. After completing his Masters, he was hired  as a research associate for the Specialty Crops Program at CSU. After two years working at CSU, Dan moved back to Denver to work for the Colorado Department of Agriculture (CDA) as an inspector for the Plant Industry Division, where he  worked for three years before being hired at Colorado State University Denver County Extension in April 2015 as the Horticulture Agent.

Turner Wyatt is the Executive Director of Denver Food Rescue, a nonprofit organization in Denver, Colorado, focused on improving health equity outcomes for low income families by increasing access to healthy food in areas with insufficient access to healthy food. In 2014 he graduated manga cum laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder with focuses in environmental studies, leadership studies, and sustainable energy studies. 

Mya is a champion of humane food & slow(er) living practices, in order to help bring about the soulful, mindful shifts that lead communities to greater health & resiliency. Under the moniker "Liberation Sequence Gardens" (LSG), Mya has created a 22-foot mobile garden for her "Ministry of Food" project. After a broadly-successful 2015 pilot, the garden is back and ready to engage big community questions around "Waking Up in America." Prior to the Ministry of Food project, LSG worked at the sidewalk-level (since 2011), helping pockets of neighbors in NNE (Near Northeast) Denver build semi-communal garden plots. Their work, as a sort of "good food" missionary outfit, has been across a broad spectrum of citizens and organizations. Standing at the intersection of art, advocacy & community, the Ministry of Food Mobile Garden is a cross-pollinator of skills, ideas, inspiration, education & activation.  

Mya was a founding member of the Near Northeast Health Action Network's Wise Council (2011) - now SHARE of NNE Denver (a LiveWell Community); she was also on the core planning team for their community-based food assessment (2013-14). She worked closely with the SFPC's "Residential Sales" Workgroup, resulting in the council's traction-gaining work around the "sell-what-you-grow-from-your-house" ordinance (2013); she has been a council member since 2014 and currently co-chairs the council's Membership Workgroup (2015).  

Jody Norman is a food system-planning consultant, with an environmental-planning background and a passion for sustainable city and community creation in all its complexity. Jody brings to the SFPC a systemic understanding of: the food system, from production to waste; the food-water-energy-waste nexus; poverty and how to address it through the emergent understandings of social sustainability theory. Her personal focal point of policy instrument-creation is where the built environment and its attendant urban ecology, biogeochemical flows, and social structures all intersect with the natural world, and her goal is to join with colleagues to collaboratively advance the creation of a regenerative construct that enhances the well-being of people, communities, and the natural world — a sustainable city at its best. She has taught sustainability courses at the University of Colorado in Denver, worked with the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute, WPM Consulting, and the nonprofit Women in Sustainable Energy, as well as serving as a member of Denver Seeds.