FOX Business, Government Subsidies Making You Fat?

Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel argues government farm subsidies, particularly for corn, are making America’s obesity crisis worse.  Read more...
August 30, 2011

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Staff Bios

Josh Viertel, President
As president of Slow Food USA, Josh is working to create a world in which all people can eat food that is good for them, good for the people who grow it and good for the planet.  He previously co-founded and co-directed the Yale Sustainable Food Project at Yale University.  The project transformed the university’s cafeteria to a menu based on sustainable, local foods, built an organic farm on campus, and developed food and agriculture curriculum and programs for undergraduates.  Prior to his work at Yale, Josh started Mamabrook Farm, a small organic vegetable farm that provided food to local restaurants and farmers’ markets. Josh graduated from Harvard University with degrees in philosophy and literature.  In 2010, he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.  Josh is dedicated to building a social movement that can transform our relationship to food and farming.

Angelines Alba Lamb, Associate Director of National Programs
Angelines joined Slow Food USA in September 2010. In her role as Program Manager for Campaigns and Projects, she helps inspire the Slow Food network and the broader public to work towards good, clean, and fair food practices and policies both locally and nationally. Angelines has over 15 years experience in the non-profit sector, working as a youth coordinator, a housing rights organizer, and a fundraiser. Her passion for good food that is grown and harvested in sustainable ways arose from her years living in the Bay Area of California, meeting people who were connecting sustainable food systems to racial, economic, and social justice. She was born and raised in the Bronx by a Panamanian mother, an elementary school teacher, which explains her love of the Yankees, hip-hop, collective bargaining, and carimañolas. She grew up marching for farm workers’ rights and against police brutality, learning early on about the power that lies in collective action for social change.

Jane Sung E Bai, Director of National Programs
After 25 years of racial and economic justice and immigrant rights organizing, she embraced food justice when she enrolled her daughter in a daycare that serves low-income children. Dismayed by the Board of Education-provided meals, Sung E made a commitment to prepare her daughter’s breakfast and lunch everyday and to work towards improving access to nutritious food for working people. Along with being the executive director of a community-based organization for almost 12 years, Sung E has held teaching appointments in higher education, been a certified advocate for domestic violence survivors and trainer for grassroots organizers, and served on various leadership bodies of local and national organizations. She believes in the power of everyday people making change every day.

Jenny Best, Chief of Staff
Jenny joined the staff of Slow Food USA in January 2010, wanting to help create a world where people are inspired to regularly cook and to eat together, and where environmentally friendly food production flourishes.  Jenny oversees public relations for the national office and is the primary liaison to the Board of Directors and Slow Food International.  Prior to Slow Food, she served the City of New York for eight years, as Chief of Staff at the city buildings agency and as a member of Mayor Bloomberg’s City Hall staff.  Before her time in government, Jenny was a professional dancer with New York City Ballet.  She enjoys making pizza, tending to her edible garden and has undertaken a personal project where she is trying to eat mostly fresh, organic food on $6 a day for 365 days.

Aimee Thunberg, Program Manager, Membership
Aimee is passionate about quality, fresh foods and the social experiences surrounding a good meal.  She joined the staff in 2011, after more than a decade in marketing and fundraising for public broadcasting, among other community-based, non-profit organizations.  A firm believer in the power of media to engage and build support for the greater good through advocacy and charitable donations, she completed a BA in public relations and MBA in media management to augment her fundraising experience.  She credits Barbara Kingsolver’s book “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” for teaching her to think locally and enjoy eating seasonally.

Hnin Hnin, Associate Manager of National Programs
Hnin joined the staff of Slow Food USA in September 2010.  In this capacity she works with young people from Slow Food on Campus and other organized groups to create movement towards a better food system.  Hnin grew up in Brooklyn, eating her mom’s amazing home cooking. Coming from a working class, immigrant family with a father who is a food worker, she sees the need for a united food justice movement that addresses food security and fair labor issues in addition to promoting healthy and sustainable food options. She is hopeful about facilitating multi-issue coalitions to dismantle the forms of discrimination that underlie unequal access to good food. Before joining Slow Food USA, she worked as a prep cook and interned at Applied Research Center in Oakland, CA.

Gordon Jenkins, Associate Director of National Programs
Gordon joined the staff of Slow Food USA in 2009 after leading the Slow Food Berkeley chapter for two years. In 2008, he was part of the team that organized Slow Food Nation in San Francisco. Gordon grew up eating Happy Meals and deep-fried corn dogs, until his track coach told him that eating healthy would help him run faster. (It did.) His big “food awakening” came a few years later, while working on a farm, where he found purpose in growing food and bringing people together around the table. Those are still his favorite things to do.

Kate Krauss, Director of Development
Kate joined Slow Food USA in 2009 after working in major gift fundraising at The Nature Conservancy, where she had responsibility for fundraising for the organization’s China program and its climate change initiative.  As Director of Development, Kate oversees Slow Food USA’s major gift individual and institutional fundraising initiatives.  Kate began her career in television journalism, working in production for the ABC News programs World News Tonight and Nightline. A native of southern Ohio, Kate has loved having the opportunity to live on the east coast and in California, but she still has a soft spot for Midwestern summer thunderstorms and fresh-picked sweet corn.

Monika V.I. Kunz, Associate Director of Development
Monika joined Slow Food USA in 2010 and currently oversees the organization’s major gift portfolio after spending the last decade in development offices at a variety of arts organizations. Prior to Slow Food, Monika directed the development effort at High 5 Tickets to the Arts, managed donor relations at the Brooklyn Museum, and oversaw the annual fund, alumni and parent programs at The Boston Conservatory. A long time lover of delicious meals, only during the last few years did she realize she not only cared about how the flavors came together on her plate, but also wanted to know the story behind her food. After meeting real live farmers, she’s hooked on local, sustainable food and is thrilled to help promote it daily in her work.

Nathan Leamy, Associate Director of Operations
Nathan came to Slow Food USA via his work at Slow Food Nation in San Francisco. Nathan’s agricultural education truly began when he attended Deep Springs College where he studied politics and managed 152 acres of organically grown alfalfa. After Deep Springs, he attended Oberlin College.  There he spent time working with the student cooperative association, eventually developing a housing and dining cooperative which focused on educating students to eat well. Nathan has spent time working for the government and various non-profits.  Post college, Nathan completed a Watson Fellowship studying how global changes in agricultural and economic policy have altered the consumption of traditional breads in Mexico, India, France, Italy, and Egypt.

Tim Smith, Associate Manager of New Mediat
Tim joined Slow Food USA in July of 2011 as the Associate Program Manager for Online Engagement. He comes to the staff with extensive experience in both online and offline media production. Most recently, Tim served as the Program Coordinator for a statewide AmeriCorps program in Massachusetts where he managed the organization’s marketing and communications, organized annual events, and helped create an alumni and youth program. Prior to that, he worked as a sports radio and online television producer. Tim is a graduate of Fordham University and enjoys local food, local music, and all things from his hometown of Boston, MA.

Emily Walsh, Manager, Public Relations and Marketing
Emily joined Slow Food USA in 2011, bringing a diverse communications and marketing background, and more than six years experience in both agency and corporate settings. She has represented a wide variety of sustainable, non-profit, real estate, travel and technology clients. However, healthy and traditional food is in Emily’s blood; her family owned and managed an Italian restaurant for several years, and she lived on a farm in Italy for a summer as a child. Most recently, she helped launch a farm with an innovative Consumer Supported Agriculture model. A graduate of Fordham University with a B.A. in International Political Economy, and a dual minor in Business Communications and Italian, Emily also holds a Digital Media Marketing professional certificate from New York University. When not working, she enjoys spending time with her husband, friends and family, particularly on the Cape in Chatham, Mass.

Corporate Partners

Cozz-ee: Combining Coffee and a Cause, and Sharing the Proceeds with Slow Food!

Cozz-ee is an online coffee company that allows you to choose your coffee, choose your cause and change your world.  Cozz-ee sells premium coffee from the best coffee producing regions in the world and then gives away all of its profits to fight seven leading causes affecting our world today.

When you buy Cozz-ee for your home and office and choose the “Food and Farming” as your cause, 100% of the profits from your purchase will go to Slow Food USA to help rid the world of this issue.

Simple Right? You get awesome coffee and can make a difference at the same time.  You don’t even have to give up your local coffee shop excursions.  Please visit www.cozz-ee.com to get started!

Employment and Internships

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Slow Food USA Employment

Development and Operations Coordinator The Development and Operations Coordinator will provide support basic operations of the development office and support major donor stewardship and membership giving campaigns. A critical part of this work entails managing Slow Food USA’s fundraising database, including maintaining records, providing reports, and generating lists of donors for cultivation events, stewardship activities and solicitations. The Coordinator may also have opportunities to help develop stewardship and solicitation materials, including grant proposals and reports. In addition to a primary portfolio of development activities, the Coordinator will also provide assistance to Slow Food USA’s operations team.

Specific job duties and instructions to apply can be downloaded here. The application deadline is February 24.

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Slow Food USA Internships

We are no longer accepting internship applications. Please check back in March for information on summer internships.

Slow Food USA has interns in the office year-round. From January to May, we offer a spring semester internship to students for college credit. Students can apply October 1-15.

 We also offer a summer internship, open to current college students and recent graduates hoping to learn about the food movement. Summer interns are in the office June through August. We accept summer applications March 1-15.

 Our fall internship is also open to current college students and recent graduates. Fall interns work from September through December and can apply June 1-15.

General tasks and responsibilities shared by all interns:

• Assisting with ongoing projects about improving our food system
• Answering phone inquiries on current campaigns and programs as well as issues of sustainable food production
• Researching, writing and fact-checking articles, features, event listings and other projects for our website
• Attending to various member service issues, such as member comments and questions and requests for materials
• General administrative tasks and other office duties

Qualifications:

• A keen interest in food, food policy, nutrition, advocacy, and/or campaign-building
• Currently enrolled in or graduated from an accredited university or comparable experience
• Ability to handle multiple projects and meet deadlines
• Ability to work effectively independently, with minimal supervision, while also team-building via phone and email
• Professional, friendly, fearless phone demeanor
• Being a quick study and a curious learner
• Good writing skills
• Good general and internet research skills
• Creativity and willingness to have good ideas and share them
• Computer skills, including Word and Excel

Minimum 20 hours per week for three months for fall and summer, and 15 hours per week for five months during the spring semester. Interns who can dedicate more time to the internship will gain more from it and be involved in more interesting work. Internships are unpaid at this time, however many students can earn academic credit for their time at Slow Food USA. Please send a short cover letter stating your top two choices and resume to Emily Stephenson at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). No phone calls, please.

Privacy Policy

PRIVACY PRINCIPLES

This Web site is owned and operated by Slow Food USA. Our intention is to provide an informative tool for those interested in conservation and as a means of allowing our constituency to become more involved in our mission. We recognize that visitors to our site may be concerned about the information they provide to us and how we treat that information. Slow Food USA is committed to honoring our constituents’ privacy preferences. To this end, Slow Food USA supports the following principles:

CONSUMER CHOICE

We believe a visitor to our site is the one to best determine:

• When—and under what conditions—to provide “personally identifiable information” (e.g. data that may be used to identify, contact, or locate a person).

• When such information may be shared with other organizations.

• When to remain anonymous.

Informed Consent

If personally identifiable information is collected, we believe a visitor to our site has the right to:

• Know when we are collecting personal information.

• Know what personal information is collected, and the purpose of collection.

• Expect the opportunity to choose whether or not personal information will be provided to any third parties.

• Expect reasonable steps to be taken to protect personal information from unauthorized use.

• Review the accuracy of personal information and update it.

PRIVACY POLICY

This policy covers Web sites owned or operated by Slow Food USA. We encourage you to take the time to read this privacy policy.

Personal Information Collected

In general, when you visit our Web sites and access information you remain anonymous. We do not require you to register or provide personal information to us to view our site. There are occasions when we will ask for additional information. We do this to better understand and respond to your needs, and provide you with services that may be valuable to you. For example, personally identifiable information will be collected in order for you to become a member of Slow Food USA online.

Use of Information

Personally identifiable information is not made available to other non-profit organizations or to for-profit organizations unless you request otherwise. We will not provide any of your personal information to other organizations.

Security of Your Credit Card Information

We will take appropriate steps to protect your privacy. We will also protect your personal information in storage. For example, if you supply us with your credit card information to become a member or make a donation, we encrypt the card number. Contributions may also be made by printing out the online form and mailing it to:

Attn: Member Services
Slow Food USA
20 Jay Street, Suite M04
Brooklyn, NY 11201

You can also contact us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call us between 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. EST at 718.260.8000.

Links to Third Party Sites

We provide links to third party sites. Since we do not control those Web sites, we encourage you to review the privacy policies posted on these third party sites.

Cookies

What are “Cookies”? “Cookies” are small files sent from a Web server to your computer through your browser program. There are two types of cookies: non-persistent and persistent cookies.

A non-persistent cookie enables a Web site to temporarily keep information on your computer as you travel from one page to another on our site. This cookie is automatically deleted from your machine when you close your browser. Because these cookies are necessary to provide some functions, failure to allow such cookies may make some of the functions on our Web site unavailable to you.

A persistent cookie is kept even when you close your browser. You can manually delete these cookies using commands specific to your browser and computer system. These cookies store information that would generally not change from session to session. They also contain information that would need to be reentered by you each time you visit the Web site. For example, a common use of persistent cookies is to allow a registered site visitor to enter the site without having to specify their user-id and password.

Use of Cookies: Slow Food USA uses cookies for various reasons. Slow Food USA only reads cookies written by our site. It does not use cookies to obtain information on other Web sites that you may visit. We may use cookies to store some history about the parts of our sites that you have visited to help you navigate our site more easily or to alert you to related pages on our site that may interest you.

Electronic Mail sent to us containing personal information

You may decide to send Slow Food USA personally identifying information, for example, in a message containing information about your membership. We will only use this information to identify you as a member of Slow Food USA and to determine how to respond to the electronic mail. We will not use this information for any purpose other than to resolve the matter identified in the email.

Questions

Slow Food USA welcomes comments and questions on this policy. We are dedicated to protecting your personal information, and will make every reasonable effort to keep that information secure.

If you have any questions, please contact us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or call us between 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. EST at 718.260.8000..

You can help Slow Food USA maintain the accuracy of your information by notifying us of any changes to your address, title, phone number or email address. To update your membership file, email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) , or write us at:

Attn: Member Services
Slow Food USA
20 Jay Street, Suite M04
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Terms and Conditions: User Conduct

You agree to abide by all applicable local, state, national and international laws and regulations regarding your use of our service.

Credit Card

You agree that you are an authorized user of any credit card that you supply to us, and you understand and agree that we have an obligation to fully investigate any possible fraudulent credit card use. If you are under 18 years of age, you must have parental consent in order to purchase tickets and participate in Slow Food USA.

Refund Policy

Slow Food USA will issue refunds at our sole discretion. Requests for refunds must be made in the following manner to be considered:
The refund request has to be in writing via letter; and that the customer shall have paid for by Visa or MasterCard or debit card via our website.
Refund Procedures
    The letter should be sent to:
    Attn: Member Services
    Slow Food USA
    20 Jay Street, Suite M04
    Brooklyn, NY 11201

Information Required in the letter:
    Contact person’s name
    Copy of contact person’s ID
    Contact person’s local phone number and address
    Person’s local bank account number for refund, name of the bank and account holder’s name
    Money order or postal note number or copy of the slip
    Date and method of the purchase
Standard turnaround time for refund is within one month from the date we receive the customer refund request letter. We will notify the customer of its decision to refund or to reject the refund request for the reasons stated in this policy within one month from the date we receive the customer refund request letter.

Payment Page

The security of your personal information is very important to us, and we are committed to protecting the information we collect. While we cannot guarantee absolute security of your personal information, http://www.slowfoodusa.org uses firewalls and Secure Socket Layers for all personal data we collect from you. We also employ many different security techniques to protect personal data against loss, misuse, alteration, and unauthorized access.

The information you provide to us will also be covered by this policy.
Due to the rapidly evolving technologies on the Internet, we may occasionally update this policy. All revisions will be posted to this site. A revised Privacy Policy will apply only to data collected subsequent to its effective date.

History of Slow Food

History of the Movement

Slow Food first began as a small Italian association in 1986. Led by Carlo Petrini, Slow Food was created in response to the increasing industrialization of food and standardizing of taste. Carlo recognized that with the rise of fast food, thousands of food varieties and food traditions were disappearing, and that people were losing the connection between the plate and the planet. To counter the fast food trend, Slow Food aimed to demonstrate alternatives to industrial food and farming, to raise awareness of how our food impacts the environment, and to support the workers who produce our food. Today, there are 100,000 Slow Food members, working for good, clean and fair food in over 150 countries.

History of Slow Food

In 1986, founding father of the Slow Food movement Carlo Petrini recognized that the industrialization of food was standardizing taste, and leading to the annihilation of thousands of food varieties and flavors. He wanted to reach out to consumers and to demonstrate that they had choices over fast food and supermarket homogenization. He rallied his friends and his community, and began to speak out at every opportunity about the effects of a fast culture. Soon after, Petrini realized that in order to keep those alternative food choices alive, it was imperative for an eco-gastronomic movement to exist -- one that was ecologically minded and concerned with sustainability, and one that acknowledged the connection between the plate and the planet. With preservation of taste at the forefront, he sought to support and protect small growers and artisanal producers, support and protect the physical environment, and promote biodiversity.

Also see Slow Food’s historical timeline.

What We Do

Slow Food USA is a national non-profit that believes in a world where food and farming are sources of health and pleasure for everyone. Organized into local chapters nationwide, our supporters, members and chapter leaders raise awareness through local projects, national advocacy campaigns and education, and seek to provide people with a pathway to make a difference in the sustainable food movement. From building a school garden to joining a campaign to make it easier to afford and access real food, Slow Food staff, members and supporters are reshaping the story of food and farming in America.

About Us

Our Vision: Food is a common language and a universal right.  Slow Food envisions a world in which all people can eat food that is good for them, good for the planet, and good for those who produce it.

Slow Food USA is part of a global, grassroots organization with supporters in over 150 countries who believe that food and farming should be sources of health and well being for everyone. Through international and national advocacy, local projects and bringing people together through the common language of food, Slow Food members and supporters are making it easier to access real food that is good for us, good for those who produce it and good for the planet.

As a non-profit member-supported association, Slow Food was founded in 1989 to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.

Slow Food USA’s network includes more than 250,000 supporters, 25,000 members and 225 chapters.