Our Team
Curt is a co-founder and the Executive Director of FoodCorps. After growing up in Oregon and finding his passion for food and agriculture at The Mountain School and Yale, he moved to Iowa to investigate the role of subsidized commodities in the American obesity epidemic. The film he co-created there, King Corn, produced with Ian Cheney and Aaron Woolf, received a national theatrical release and PBS broadcast, helped drive policy discussion around the Farm Bill, and earned a George Foster Peabody Award. Under his Food and Community Fellowship with the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Ellis helped launch the mobile garden project Truck Farm and directed Big River, a sequel to King Corn, for Discovery's Planet Green. Ellis is a Draper Richards Kaplan Social Entrepreneur and a recipient of the Heinz Award. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC and NPR, is a frequent speaker on college campuses, and serves on the Board of Directors of Slow Food USA.
Cecily UptonCecily is a co-founder and Service Program Director. Prior to founding FoodCorps, Upton managed Youth Programs at Slow Food USA, launching the Slow Food on Campus program, building opportunities for youth to engage directly with food system advocacy, and supporting school garden and kids cooking programs across the country. Upton is a successful photographer, an avid bike polo player, and aspiring urban homesteader. She works from her home in Portland, Oregon.
Debra Eschmeyer
Deb is a co-founder and Director of Policy and Partnerships.She is a recipient of the James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, in recognition of her school food reform efforts as a Kellogg Food & Community Fellow and as the Communications and Outreach Director of the National Farm to School Network. Eschmeyer was an editor for Food Justice, a contributor to the documentary Lunch Line, author of several publications, and creator of campaigns and films to better connect federal nutrition programs with local agriculture. A go-to expert on food systems and policy, she works from her organic farm in Ohio.
Lauren Burnham
Lauren is the Finance and Operations Manager for FoodCorps. After a few years in private sector finance she decided to meld her passion for social issues with her love of numbers. Lauren earned her MPA at NYU’s Graduate School of Public Service and has worked with an array of non-profit organizations. From her work with inner city youth to her most recent position as the Director of Finance & Operations at the SF Girls Chorus, Lauren is passionate about helping the organizations that help our youth grow and succeed. When she is not working toward her CPA license, Lauren fantasizes about mastering her brother’s talent for creating the perfect salad dressing and finding little ways to convince the world that healthy eating makes good financial sense.
Mariana Cotlear
Mariana is the Development Coordinator at FoodCorps. She got her professional start in the restaurant industry, where she worked as the executive assistant for celebrity chef José Andrés. During this time, she grew increasingly fascinated by the transformative power of food and the potential to improve health and well-being through cooking. Seeking to channel her passion for food to address the growing burden of obesity and diet-related disease in our country, Mariana pursued a Master of Public Health degree at Columbia University, where she co-founded Students for Food Policy and Obesity Prevention. Mariana is an avid cook and attributes her love of food to her Peruvian family.
Karen Eller
Karen Eller is the Director of Development for FoodCorps. A native Hoosier, Karen abandoned Indiana's wintery ways to attend Trinity University in San Antonio, TX, majoring in English and Geology. She accidentally began her fundraising career as an intern with The Nature Conservancy -- a position that fueled a decade-long pursuit of global wildlife conservation. She opened The Nature Conservancy's first office in downtown Austin, TX and eventually relocated to San Francisco where she oversaw the individual major gifts program in Silicon Valley. It was in the Bay Area that Karen first learned of the transformative power of delicious food and began to use superlatives excessively while eating. (e.g., "This is the most amazing pluot I have EVER tasted!") Karen's love of the outdoors brought her to Colorado where now she enjoys working for FoodCorps from her home office outside Boulder. In her spare time, Karen's focus turns to the world beyond as she explores models for green and conservation burial in America. A reluctant adopter of culinary trends, Karen is loathe to admit that her new favorite food is kale chips.
Lucy Flores
Lucy is the Service Program Coordinator. Prior to joining FoodCorps, Lucy worked as an outreach and community screening producer with Film Sprout, a distribution agency that develops grassroots screening campaigns for independent, social issue documentaries. She studied at the Centre for Film and Media at the University of Cape Town and received a degree in Political Communication at The George Washington University. When she's not spending time with the FoodCorps family, you can often find her cooking, writing about cooking on Lucy Eats Veggies, and watching classic films.
Simone Herbin
Simone is a Program Associate at FoodCorps. Inspired by a service-learning trip to a urban farm in New Orleans, she decided to continue exploring the food movement when she returned to New York City. Prior to joining the team at FoodCorps, she worked with a high school community gardening project and interned with City Harvest's Healthy Schools Program. She enjoys buying unfamiliar vegetables at the farmers market and trying to figure out how to make them taste delicious. Hint: it usually involves garlic.
Jerusha Klemperer
Jerusha is a co-founder and the Communications Director. Prior to working for FoodCorps, she was an Associate Program Director at Slow Food USA, where she helped design and implement national lifestyle and advocacy campaigns that sought to transform food policy as well as individuals' relationships to food. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University, where she studied nothing at all to do with sustainable food systems. She is also a writer of blog posts, book reviews and tweets, writing for outlets such as Huffington Post, Civil Eats, Well and Good NYC, and her own personal blog Eat Here 2. In her free time she tries to turn her black thumb green, and cooks up food and fun with Conni's Avant Garde Restaurant.
Eva Ringstrom
Eva is the Research and Evaluation Manager at FoodCorps. Prior to joining FoodCorps, she worked as an urban planning consultant for cities looking to increase residents' access to healthy food, taught hands-on food education in Seattle Public Schools, started a chef-in-the-classroom program for Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch, and made desserts as the pastry chef for award-winning L'Etoile Restaurant in Madison. When she's not thinking about FoodCorps' impact on child health and the food system, you can find her cooking for friends and neighbors and exploring the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.
Kristen Sitchler
As Legal Manager and Garden Grants Manager, Kristen serves as FoodCorps’ in-house counsel and manages the School Garden Grant Program in partnership with the Whole Kids Foundation. Before joining FoodCorps, Kristen worked for several years as nonprofit counsel at the Washington, DC firm of Venable LLP, and as a law clerk for the Honorable Edward C. Prado on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Kristen is also a director of DC Greens, a nonprofit supporting seed-to-table education in the District of Columbia, a certified Master Gardener, and a dedicated school garden volunteer.
