OUR TEAM

SCHUYLER COLE recently joined the Center for Good Food Purchasing as an Analyst. She is excited to assist institutions in meeting and complying with the Good Food Purchasing Standards and to support the Center’s current and future initiatives. Schyler earned a Bachelor’s of Arts in Economics from Stanford University and completed the pre-medical requirements. While at Stanford she was a research intern at the Stanford Prevention Research Center where she co-authored a paper on interdisciplinary food-related academic programs in the United States. After graduating, she founded Memphis Health Through Heritage, a health education series based in her hometown of Memphis, TN. She is currently working to scale this program and create a program training manual for community health leaders.

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.

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.

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.

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.