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Hear from moderator Kathleen Finlay, a leader in the regenerative agriculture movement for most of her career, along with Michelle Hughes, Linda Shiue, MD, Kanchan Koya, Ph.D, and Chef Ethan Frisch in a panel discussion on food, farming and “spicy health”.

BIOS:

Kathleen Finlay, President, Glynwood (moderator)

Kathleen has been a leader in the regenerative agriculture movement for most of her career. She has also been instrumental in organizing women who work for environmental progress. Since arriving at Glynwood in 2012, she has refined the organization’s mission and become a national figure in the world of progressive agricultural nonprofits. Under her leadership, Glynwood has become a premier learning hub for food and farming professionals.

Previously, Kathleen was a Director of Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment, where she developed and shaped programs to educate communities about the correlation between human health and the global environment; created a farm-friendly food policy for dining services; and produced a comprehensive online guide to nutritional, seasonal eating and cooking in the Northeast. She also co-founded the Harvard Community Garden, the University’s first garden dedicated solely to the production of food, produced two award-winning documentaries (Once Upon a Tide and Healthy Humans, Healthy Oceans,) and co-authored the book Sustainable Healthcare(Wiley, 2013).

Kathleen also founded Pleiades, a membership organization working to advance women’s leadership in the sustainability movement. She holds a degree in Biology from UC Santa Cruz and a Master of Science in Science Journalism from Boston University. She has authored numerous reports and publications and acts as an advisor to various environmental and community organizations, including Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney’s Agricultural Advisory Board and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s Agricultural Working Group.

Michelle Hughes, Associate Director, Regional Food Programs, Glynwood

Michelle Hughes is Associate Director of Regional Food Programs at Glynwood, bringing to this role her passion for connecting diverse people with varied experiences and expertise to create a more just and resilient food system in the Hudson Valley. At Glynwood, Michelle leads the CSA is a SNAP program, as well as the Regional Food for Health project, an effort to connect the benefits of regenerative agriculture to health and wellness and to engage health care professionals in food systems dialogues. Previously, Michelle was the Co-Director and Head Buyer for Rolling Grocer 19, a food justice project anchored by a full-line grocery store with a tiered pricing system designed to prioritize members of the community experiencing food insecurity. Prior to that she was the Director of Investments and Partnerships for the National Young Farmers Coalition, and for 10 years directed a program at GrowNYC where she helped 20 immigrant families establish independent farm businesses on a combined 400 acres. Michelle holds a BS in Conservation Ecology and Agroecology from Rutgers University

Linda Shiue, MD, Chef and Author of Spicebox Kitchen

Linda Shiue, MD, is an internist and professionally trained chef in the department of Adult and Family Medicine at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco’s offices in Mission Bay. She believes that the best medicine is prevention. As director of culinary medicine at Kaiser Permanente San Francisco, she founded the Thrive Kitchen, a teaching kitchen with hands-on cooking classes to empower clinicians and patients with a new set of skills and knowledge to improve their health and wellness — nutrition applied through cooking skills.

After growing up on Long Island, New York, and graduating from Brown University, she moved to San Francisco for her internal medicine residency at UC, San Francisco. After 15 years of practicing primary care internal medicine, she realized that she wanted to share cooking skills as a clinical tool, so she took a sabbatical to attend San Francisco Cooking School, where she graduated with a Certificate in Culinary Arts, and also earned a Certificate in Plant-Based Nutrition from Cornell.

You can read more about her love of food on her food blog, www.SpiceboxTravels.com, read more about Food and Nutrition on her Facebook page, www.Facebook.com/TheDoctorsSpicebox, and try out more of her recipes in her forthcoming debut cookbook, Spicebox Kitchen.

Kanchan Koya, Ph.D, Author of Spice Spice Baby, and host of Radical Vitality podcast

Kanchan has a Ph.D. in Biomedicine from Harvard University and training from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition and she knows one thing for certain: food can be our best medicine! Spices have powerful health-boosting properties validated by modern science. PLUS they make food ultra delicious. Yet, many of us use them only occasionally and we’re scared to offer them to our kids.  When she started feeding her son spiced baby purees at 7 months of age, like pear with cardamom or sweet potato with clove, many of her mom friends in New York City were shocked. She realized how many misconceptions persist around spices. And Spice Spice Baby was born.

Chef Ethan Frisch, Pastry Chef, Instructor at the Institute for Culinary Education, and co-founder of Burlap and Barrel

Ethan is a native New Yorker, entrepreneur and activist around food systems and social justice. Ethan has worked in kitchens as a line cook and pastry chef in New York and London, and as the chef behind Guerrilla Ice Cream. He left kitchens to become a humanitarian aid worker, and worked with NGOs including the Aga Khan Foundation in Afghanistan, Maries Stopes in Sierra Leone, and Doctors Without Borders on the Syrian/Jordanian border.

Ethan leads Burlap & Barrel’s sourcing, importing and international logistics, as well as supply relationships with restaurants and manufacturers across North America. He is also an adjunct Chef Instructor at the Institute for Culinary Education in New York City.

He is honored to serve on the Boards of Directors of the Bond Street Theatre, which uses theater to teach conflict resolution and resilience in areas of instability around the world, Restaurant After Hours, addressing the mental health crisis in the restaurant industry, and the student-led racial literacy and justice organization CHOOSE, as well as on the Advisory Board of Fragments Theater, a youth theater company in Palestine. He is also on the Organizing Committee of the Queens International Night Market, and has been an adjunct lecturer at the City College of New York and an instructor with the Experiment in International Living’s Leadership Institute.

He holds a dual Bachelor’s Degree in Conflict Studies and Education and Social Change from the City University of New York, and a Master’s Degree in Violence, Conflict and Development from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.