David's story strikes a chord with us for many reasons, but the one that keeps bubbling to the top for me is 'networking'. It's an overused word, for sure, but the funny thing about that is you can never get too much of it. So maybe if we think of it as a different metaphor - an instrument, perhaps. Then we see networking in a new light - it's a companion, a window into another world, a tool for doing a job that we cannot do alone. We hope that David reminds you that every interaction can be meaningful, worthwhile, even ultimately a stepping stone to the thing you'll do next, or the thing that you most want to do.
When did you know that you wanted to work in food?
I grew up with a garden and a compost pile. I remember sitting on the porch, spitting watermelon seeds into the yard and later seeing the vines grow across the yard and produce new fruit. I had a blue medal winning gourd one year at the County Fair. We celebrated the annual peanut festival in my town. My parents were doctors, assigned to rural North Carolina by the Public Health Service Corps, because there were not enough doctors available to serve the county's population. Oh, the stories they tell. My mother, as a new doctor in the public clinic learned quite a lot of practical patient care information and social context from her extremely experienced Physician's Assistant, who had also been a Vietnam War medical personnel before that. One day a young mom brought her infant into the clinic, presenting that the child just would not stop crying. Expecting it to be a teething problem, and as you would do in a checkup, my mom held the infant and said "Okay, let's see whats going on in here" and opened the child's mouth to have a look. Instead of where she expected to see milking teeth, all she saw were little, corroded pits. Nothing in her medical training had prepared her for this moment. She quietly and calmly closed the infants mouth, handed the child back to the mother, and took her physician's assistant out into the hall. Addressing him by name she asked, "What is that?" and he responded in a slow, sad, knowing southern drawl, "That Ma'am, is Coca-Cola for breakfast."
Access to good food and the resources and support for the people who produce it is the salient public health issue of our time. It was moments like these in my upbringing that keep me going now.
How did you get your current good food job?
I am working as a consultant now for impact-oriented small food businesses. I just wrapped up the launch of a new service to connect people with the food business expertise that they need to get started and succeed. You can see it at goodfoodweb.com. A local investor who is very active in Slow Money Northern California hired me away from the Slow Money national office to co-lead our firms approach to setting up services that help small businesses succeed.
After Slow Money moved the national headquarters to Boulder, CO in 2011, I stayed on and continued telecommuting from Berkeley for well over a year. They hired a marketing person, an office manager, and finally a technology person to replace parts of my job role piece by piece, which I found very flattering. Plus, that team can now do far more than I could alone. Outside of my day job with Slow Money, I had begun work on a startup in the new investment crowdfunding space legalized by The JOBS Act of 2012, but our team was dispirited by the lack of progress on implementing regulations (over a year late in being issued by the SEC). We put that project on the back-burner. So it was time for me to ultimately transition and that was not going to be the place. I needed a new horizon. Almost as soon as I put that possibility out there, the perfect opportunity opened up to launch Good Food Web. And with Good Food Web successfully launched, I'm now taking on new projects.
It was really tough for me to leave Slow Money, because I believe so deeply in the organization's purpose and promise. It is in a unique place in the food movement in that the solution that it proposes to our food supply problems is actually sufficient over time to address those challenges ? by looking at the access to capital piece and literally changing investor preferences and investor activity, we can create healthy infrastructure and thriving businesses that deliver quality food to their communities. I just had an amazing time reconnecting with the Slow Money crew, all of the local chapters and new investment clubs, and the attendees at the Slow Money National Gathering this past November in Louisville, KY. The gathering was hosted this year by Mary Berry and Wendell Berry of the Berry Center headquartered there in Louisville. The next gathering is about 18 months away. In the meantime, you can sign in for free to watch all of the video talks from the amazing assembly of speakers: Slow Money videos.
If there's any applicable job-seeking advice in all of that, it would be to join a local network of people who are doing the things you are interested in doing (Slow Food, Greenhorns, Farmer's Guild, Slow Money and so on!).
While I am consulting, I am also looking around for my next big project to sink my teeth into, and one of the things I am really interested in right now is how Lean Startup principles can be applied to sustainable food businesses.
Another thing that I am really enjoying is being a trustee for Kiva Zip. Kiva Zip is an amazing service, allowing new businesses in the US to access 0% interest loans. I love their approach to solving the access-to-capital problem that has to be solved by every new small business. Also, farmers on Kiva Zip can borrow twice as much, up to $10,000, at 0% interest.
How did your previous work or life experience prepare you for a good food job?
I feel now like everything I have done in volunteer work, board service, activism and my professional career all came together to make the consulting work I am doing now possible. While at Yale I was a research employee for the Agrarian Studies department. I became involved with the students who launched Food From the Earth, which led to the Yale Sustainable Food Project, getting one dining hall to go all organic and to begin sourcing local produce again, launching the Yale Farm, and integrating sustainable food matters into the official college curriculum. My role was in getting us set up as an official student organization. This seemed like a small deal at the time, but has since proven to be a pattern. At the same time, I spent much of my activist and volunteer time working on sustainability in the Yale endowment (a $12 billion fund at the time, which has since grown to well over $20 billion).
A few years later, when I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, I knew that I wanted to continue working on these issues: socially responsible investment and the good food movement. Friends of mine organized a conference in San Francisco bringing together students statewide for the California Student Sustainability Coalition. While I was several years out of school at the time, they asked me to stop by and visit. While in line for the amazing dinner that volunteers had spend all day cooking for the many assembled, I met a first year student at UC Berkeley who asked me where I was studying. I said I had gone to Yale. They had just attended a workshop about Socially Responsible Investment and heard all about the socially responsible investment campaign at Yale as part of the day's case study, and then they invited me to campus to meet with the students working on moving UC Berkeley's $1 billion endowment in a more socially responsible direction, befitting its role as funds managed by a public university for the purpose of fostering education.
While I was visiting campus every week to meet with students about "greening" the endowment, a new controversy arose as it came to light that fast food chain Panda Express was attempting to secretly negotiate a no-bid contract to become the first ever fast food company to set up shop on the Berkeley Campus. Students were increasingly upset at both the process and the prospect. They organized successively larger meetings to prevent this health blight. Some of those students begin thinking about what they would like to see as an alternative. Christina Oatfield, who now works for SELC, in particular spearheaded the idea of creating a student run food cooperative to empower students to deliver the food they wanted to see themselves. I joined her and 4 other co-founders to launch the organization. I was the only non-student involved at that stage. Soon hundreds of students were involved and in an impressive 18 month timeline they raised the funds, created the plans, found and signed the space and opened the store. They also succeeded in ending the no-bid contract negotiations with Panda Express.
As part of that process, we assembled an advisory board of local professionals. One of them was just incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, and that was Ari Derfel. At the time, he was in the process of opening the locally-sourced restaurant Gather. An opportunity came up to send someone to the first ever Slow Money National Gathering and we approached Ari for assistance. He offered to help with that if we could help him find a sturdy employee to assist with the restaurant opening. I ended up taking both roles, attending the conference and then joining the Gather team upon my return. There I wrote our Source Book, detailing where all the food in the restaurant came from, just in time for our opening and ultimately became our business manager, handling our investment closing, payroll, accounts payable, marketing, press visits, website, social media, newsletters, and just generally everything that came up. A restaurant opening is a thing of beauty to watch, as each experienced staff person assumes their roles and the team melds together to make the kitchen and the front of house function. It was intense, more intense than any other workplace or academic experience. It was like having a normal office job on top of preparing to put on a five hour theatrical production (dinner service) that started promptly at 5pm each evening and had to be flawless each time. Right now, I am also working on publishing the Source Book that I wrote for Gather , to coincide with the 5th Anniversary of our restaurant opening. I've already gotten multiple inquiries from food businesses interested in creating their own source books, which I find very heartening. If you want to see what we made, you can order it here: The Source Book.
Gather was the first enterprise to raise money through the Slow Money network and then open. Now, the volunteer led activity through the network is up to over 350 small food businesses that have found financing through the growing Slow Money community, totaling over $38 million to date. Six months after completing the restaurant opening, while everything was finally beginning to run smoothly, the opportunity came up to join the Slow Money National team and I jumped at the opportunity, eager to help other small food businesses going through the pangs of raising capital and getting launched that Gather had experienced. I worked at Slow Money for three full and exciting years, which built on my experience with Gather to prepare me for the consulting work I am doing now.
What was the greatest obstacle you had to overcome in pursuing your Good Food Job dream?
When I first moved to Berkeley, I was convinced I would find the perfect opportunity in either sustainable food or socially responsible investment with a bit of looking. While I was seeking the right opportunity, the onset of the 2008 financial crisis made getting an interview surprisingly competitive. I continued to look for work, but I also changed approach somewhat and decided to just start doing what I was interested in while continuing my search. This led me ultimately to my involvement with helping students launch their own Berkeley Student Food Collective, and that set me on the trajectory I'm still on now.
What can you identify as the greatest opportunities in food right now?
To not lose sight of the power of healthy and organic choices in prepared food as a gateway to people eating more fresh produce, more fruits and vegetables, higher quality and healthier grass-based and grass-finished meats, eggs, and dairy, and to cooking fresh.
There's an incredible synergy in the good food movement right now, and I am always most encouraged and excited about the farmers and food entrepreneurs who recognize that and celebrate it in their work, their marketing, their products, and their company culture.
The more we can see each other as a movement, and continue to expand our own piece of that movement, the more impact we can make, both together and individually.
If you could be compensated for your work with something other than money, what would it be?
If I never had to work again, I would spend my time organizing vast dinner parties where everyone got to bring and share ingredients and all cook together and learn from each other. Meanwhile, I'd never pass up a gift of good fruit or dark chocolate, in case you want to get on my good side.