WHO WE ARE
The Center for Good Food Purchasing uses the power of procurement to create a transparent and equitable food system that prioritizes the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment. We do this through the nationally-networked adoption and implementation of the Good Food Purchasing Program by major institutions.
The Center manages the Good Food Purchasing Program, working with institutions to establish supply chain transparency from farm to fork and shift towards a values-based purchasing model.
The Center works with national partners and local grassroots coalitions in cities across the United States to build a cohesive movement in support of Good Food purchasing.
“Governments have few sources of leverage over increasingly globalized food systems – but public procurement is one of them. When sourcing food for schools, hospitals and public administrations, governments have a rare opportunity to support more nutritious diets and more sustainable food systems in one fell swoop.”
Olivier De Schutter, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food (2014)HOW WE WORK
A just and more regenerative food system is possible when we face the same direction together. The Good Food Purchasing Program unites stakeholders from across the food system around shared values and strategy. Together, we:
INCREASE COORDINATION
and alignment in the food movement through comprehensive, metric-driven standards that reflect a shared vision and collective values.
ENHANCE CAPACITY
of local grassroots coalitions and support for local procurement policy efforts to ensure that public food contracts reflect community values.
ACTIVATE POLICY
to institutionalize buyers’ commitments to Good Food and supply chain transparency.
EMPOWER GOVERNMENTS
by sharing tools to make informed procurement decisions, set procurement targets, and measure impact.
LEVERAGE BUYING POWER
and increased supply chain knowledge to drive change in the food industry towards suppliers that support our values.
OUR TEAM
STAFF & BOARD
VANESSA ZAJFEN comes to The Center for Good Food Purchasing from School Food Focus where she directed ProCureWorks, a program catalyzing food system change by leveraging the aggregated purchasing power of 530 school sites and 55 hospitals to develop, deliver and serve healthy, sustainable and regional foods. Prior to School Food Focus, Zajfen worked at the United States Department Agriculture (USDA), Food & Nutrition Service. While at the USDA she served as a Farm to School Regional Lead for the Midwest region; a region covering six states, 5,500 school districts and home to more than 45 million Americans. As such she provided training, technical assistance, and generalized support to a wide variety of farm to school stakeholders in her region. Vanessa also specialized in the provision of technical assistance related to local meat sourcing for K-12 school districts. Prior to the USDA Vanessa worked for the Food Service Department at San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD). The Food Service Department of SDUSD serves over 100,000 students, 80,000 meals daily and ranks in scale as the 20th largest school district in the Country. There Vanessa was the Farm to School Specialist where she launched the District’s first farm to school program, sourced and served over 1 million pounds of local and organic foods and worked directly with family farmers. From 2006 to 2009 she worked at the Urban & Environmental Policy Institute where she developed and managed various farm to institution programs, including the nation’s first Farm to WIC program. From 2005 to 2006 she worked as the Community Supported Agriculture Manager at South Coast Farms. She also founded Beyond Organic Produce Company which specialized in sourcing and selling locally grown foods. Vanessa has a BA from UC Santa Cruz and an MS in Sustainable Agriculture from Iowa State University.
LAM LE is an Analyst at the Center for Good Food Purchasing. Her work involves collecting and analyzing data, working with local partners and assisting institutions in meeting and complying with the Good Food Purchasing Standards, and supporting the Center’s current and future initiatives. Previously, Lam worked with the Green Team at Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley to support and implement green-building projects. She was also part of the Zero Waste Team at Haas, where she focused on outreach and the education of zero-waste practices. Lam is a member and volunteer at the Berkeley Student Food Collective. She holds a Bachelor’s of Business Administration from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley.
PAULA DANIELS is Co-Founder, Chief of What’s Next, and Chair of the Board of the Center for Good Food Purchasing, founded in July of 2015 as a national spin off from the Los Angeles Food Policy Council, which Paula founded in 2011. The Center for Good Food Purchasing uses the power of procurement to create a transparent and equitable food system that prioritizes the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment, through the nationally-networked adoption and implementation of the Good Food Purchasing Program by major institutions.
Paula is an experienced private sector attorney who transitioned to public policy and served in several senior level positions as a government official, including: Senior Advisor, Mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles; Commissioner, Los Angeles Department of Public Works; Commissioner, California Water Commission; Board, California Bay-Delta Authority; Commissioner, California Coastal Commission.
Her leadership in food and water policy has received recognition through numerous academic appointments and other awards. Some recent examples: 2018, Ashoka Fellowship; September 2016, Resident Fellow of the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation; 2015, Pritzker Environment and Sustainability Education Fellow at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability; 2013, Lee Chair in Real Estate Law and Urban Planning at the College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley; 2012-2013, Stanton Fellowship (awarded by the Durfee Foundation). She has been adjunct faculty at UCLA since 2010 and has also had academic appointments at USC and Vermont Law School.
Allison lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and three kids. She is an avid runner, skier, and fair weather biker, who enjoys chasing her children with kale and strawberries from her garden.
JOANN LO is the Co-Director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance and was the first staff member of the Alliance when she began in November 2009. The daughter of immigrants from Taiwan, she graduated from Yale University with a degree in Environmental Biology and has organized with both unions and a worker center. In 2000 Joann was one of two staff who started the Garment Worker Center, and she organized with garment workers in Los Angeles who led a successful campaign against retailer Forever 21, memorialized in the Emmy-winning documentary “Made in L.A.” In 2005 Joann joined Enlace, an alliance of worker centers and unions and a year later became Co-Director. Joann is the Chair of the Leadership Board of the Los Angeles Food Policy Council and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Domestic Fair Trade Association, the City of Los Angeles’ Sweatfree Advisory Committee and the Enlace Institute Advisory Board.
NATHALIE LAIDLER-KYLANDER is responsible for identifying and supporting entrepreneurs through her role as Managing Director at Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation. She is one of the world’s leading experts on nonprofit brand management. Her passion for understanding and promoting the important role that brand plays for nonprofit organizations has resulted in a decade of research, teaching, and consulting. Nathalie has been a practitioner as well as an academic over the course of her career. Her courses, including many Executive Education programs, and multiple publications have targeted nonprofit leaders, with the goal of building marketing and branding capacity in the sector. Nathalie has supported many of her students as they created and launched social enterprises both at Tufts University, where she taught entrepreneurial marketing, and at Harvard where she currently teaches strategic management for nonprofits.
She has worked extensively in both the private and social sectors over the course of her 30-year career. As a biochemist, an MBA and a PhD, Nathalie also built on her experience in strategy consulting to hold a number of prominent positions in sales, marketing and management at Medtronic Inc. She led Doctors Without Borders programs in Armenia, worked for the UNDP in Senegal, and has consulted to dozens of both large and small nonprofit organizations.
Nathalie received a BS in Biochemistry from Imperial College at London University, an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a PhD from Fletcher School at Tufts University.
Before coming to UCS, Dr. Salvador served as a program officer for food, health, and well-being with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In this capacity, he was responsible for conceptualizing and managing the Foundation’s food systems programming. He partnered with colleagues to create programs that addressed the connections between food and health, environment, economic development, sovereignty, and social justice.
Prior to that, he was an associate professor of agronomy at Iowa State University. While at ISU, Dr. Salvador taught the first course in sustainable agriculture at a land-grant university, and his graduate students conducted some of the original academic research on community-supported agriculture. He also worked with students to establish ISU’s student-operated organic farm, and with other faculty to develop the nation’s first sustainable agriculture graduate program in 2000; Dr. Salvador served as the program’s first chair. Dr. Salvador also worked as an extension agent with Texas A&M University.
Dr. Salvador has appeared on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry Show and has been quoted inThe Boston Globe, The New York Times, Politico and many other outlets. Dr. Salvador was named a 2013 NBC Latino Innovator and received the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2014. He was also an author of a 2014 op-ed in The Washington Post calling for a national food policy, which is changing how many think about food and farm policy.
Dr. Salvador earned a B.S. in agricultural science from New Mexico State University. He holds an M.S. and Ph.D. in crop production and physiology from Iowa State University.
Chuck founded Island Press to accelerate the capacity of those organizations and individuals working on these issues to think and work across traditional academic and professional disciplines. During his time at Island Press they published more than 1000 titles by leading scientists including Edward O. Wilson, Gretchen Dailey, Paul Ehrich, Jane Lubcheco, as well as policy and thought leaders such as Bruce Babbitt, Gabe Klein and Jan Ghel. With each of these author’s work, Island Press helped to introduce new ideas that changed their fields.
Healthy food systems have been a personal priority for Chuck’s work and Island Press and he was honored to be asked to join the Center’s board. He hopes that his strategic communication skills could help spread the word about the it’s important work.
Wood brings over 20 years of experience in corporate sustainability, environmental management, and consumer engagement. Most recently, he was on the executive team at organic yogurt pioneer Stonyfield Farm as the company’s VP Sustainability Innovation. Prior to that, he was founding executive director of Climate Counts, an international NGO focused on measuring and scoring the world’s largest consumer companies on their concrete, enterprise-level responses to climate change. Wood has consulted to brands, elected officials, and public agencies on mobilizing the public around ideas that improve the environment and build community, including the start-up of a groundbreaking curbside food waste recovery program, the expansion of carshare program access to underrepresented communities in the Puget Sound area and Los Angeles, development of an early shuttle program for Bay Area biotech workers, and a citizen engagement program that nearly resulted in innovative fixed-rail for Seattle. Early in his career, he worked with the plastics industry in the policy and product stewardship arenas and was later instrumental in developing Urban Ecology’s “Blueprint for a Sustainable Bay Area.” He worked for many years on the alignment of economic and recreation demands with wetland, riparian, and wildlife corridor conservation in the Pacific Northwest.
PARTNERS
In cities across the country, the Center for Good Food Purchasing works with a network of cross-sector partners at the national and local levels to expand the reach and impact of the Good Food Purchasing Program.
NATIONAL PARTNERS
Core national partners include Food Chain Workers Alliance, the HEAL Food Alliance, and Real Food Media.
Food Chain Workers Alliance supports local partners around organizing and coalition-building, including strategy, tactics, and leadership development.
HEAL supports local coalition-building, including exchange of knowledge, skills, and resources among member-led, community-based campaigns.
Real Food Media supports communications, telling local and national stories of impact, and supporting local coalitions to build public support for the Program.
A National Campaign Committee of leading national food and farm organizations support expansion by sharing expertise and resources on advocacy, policy, the program values, research, impact evaluation, communications, coalition building and much more.
LOCAL PARTNERS
Local lead partners represent place-based coalitions, ensuring the work is grounded in local priorities, coordinating coalition-building and campaign development, and facilitating political and institutional relationships.
Local institutional partners commit to implementing the Good Food Purchasing Program values and framework, championing the program internally, participating in the multi-phased assessment process, and using assessment results to guide purchasing shifts in each of the values.
AUSTIN, TEXAS
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
CINCINNATI, OHIO
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
TWIN CITIES, MINNESOTA
OUR SUPPORTERS
Support for the Center for Good Food Purchasing is provided in part through the generosity of the following funders:
- Battery Powered
- Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation
- Kellogg Foundation
- Kresge Foundation
- Michael and Susan Dell Foundation
- Panta Rhea Foundation
We would also like to thank Community Partners for their fiscal sponsorship.
GOOD FOOD HEROES
Each year on Food Day, the Center for Good Food Purchasing recognizes the exemplary leadership of Good Food Heroes—individuals or organizations with significant accomplishments in some aspect of their work in the Good Food Purchasing Program in the past year. Good Food Heroes have demonstrated a commitment to one or more of the program values of local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare, and nutrition, and/or the core tenets of racial equity, supply chain transparency and accountability, and public leadership in driving demand for Good Food.
This year, we are pleased to honor the following organizations: Boulder Valley School District—led by Chef Ann Cooper—as our Good Food Institutional Hero for its achievement of the first-ever five star rating in the Good Food Purchasing Program; Cook County Board of Commissioners—led by Commissioner Jesús “Chuy” Garcia—as our Good Food Policy Hero for centering racial equity in its Good Food Purchasing Program policy commitment; and Teamsters Local 63 and Joint Council 42—led by Randy Cammack—as our Good Food Local Hero for securing a union contract that has raised wages improved working conditions for 320 food chain workers in Los Angeles Unified School District’s supply chain.
Read on for more about the inspiring achievements in 2018 by each of our Good Food Heroes!
JOBS & INTERNSHIPS
We are currently accepting applications for a Good Food Purchasing Analyst through December 7, 2018.
For interest in internship opportunities, please click below to be in touch with our team.
The Center for Good Food Purchasing is a project of Community Partners.