{"id":2291,"date":"2018-11-26T09:31:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T09:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/farmforward1.wpengine.com\/?p=2291"},"modified":"2023-04-11T11:12:18","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T15:12:18","slug":"building-bridges-growing-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmforward.com\/news\/building-bridges-growing-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Bridges, Growing Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"\t
\n\t\t
\n\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t

As Farm Forward\u2019s new Executive Director, I want to tell you my story of how I became passionate about farmed animal welfare and share my goals for this excellent organization.\u00a0I stepped into this new role because I\u2019ve seen Farm Forward\u2019s unique strategy, high-impact programs, and phenomenal team radically transform how people eat and farm.<\/strong> Helping lead this organization into its second decade is an honor and I\u2019m excited to see what we will accomplish together to end factory farming.<\/p>\n

My belief in the transformative power of food began more than a decade ago in college when I volunteered to cook in a student co-op, making a vegetarian dinner each week for more than a hundred of my peers. By sourcing food from dozens of local farms I got to know the foodshed of Northeast Ohio and learned that access to food\u2014especially fresh food\u2014depends on a complex set of social, economic, and geographic factors.<\/p>\n

After I graduated my experiences at the co-op drew me to Chicago to work for several years with the Chicago Food Policy Council, a coalition of organizations working to create a more equitable, healthy and just food system for Chicagoans. Seeing the impact of our work firsthand is why, today, I am so optimistic about the ability of activists to work with communities to envision and build a better world.<\/p>\n

Around the same time, I read Jonathan Safran Foer\u2019s\u00a0Eating Animals<\/a><\/em>, which made explicit the connections I had long felt between factory farming\u2019s contributions to justice issues like climate change, food security, and animal suffering. I credit\u00a0Eating Animals\u00a0with my decision to focus my career on ending factory farming. It felt like serendipity when I applied for a position at Farm Forward, which had been so intimately involved in creating that book.<\/p>\n

I began working for Farm Forward five years ago on projects to transform how animal products are sourced by\u00a0consumers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0institutions<\/a>. I\u2019ve seen Farm Forward grow from a scrappy (but astonishingly high-impact) staff of three to a team that is poised to alter the landscape of food production in the US and internationally.\u00a0With your support<\/a>, we can seize these opportunities and launch a new, more vibrant, and more impactful phase of the anti\u2013factory farming movement.<\/p>\n

Here are some of my goals for Farm Forward in the year to come:<\/h2>\n