Ann Curtis, FoodWorks Site Director

Ann Curtis is the FoodWorks Site Director for all FoodWorks cities, acting as a liaison between employers, students, site coordinators, and Middlebury College. She is also Managing Editor for Edible Louisville &The Bluegrass Region magazine. Previously, Ann directed the Louisville FoodWorks program, and spent 10 years managing Bulldogs in the Bluegrass and Bulldogs Across America, summer internship programs for Yale University, as well as Teach Kentucky, a teacher recruitment program for Greater Louisville public middle and high schools.

FoodWorks Coordinators

• Mae Quilty is the Middlebury, Vermont Site Coordinator. While she is originally from Boston, Mae has spent much of her adult life in the beautiful Green Mountain State, choosing Vermont for college and graduate school. She recently completed her Master of Arts in Sustainable Development from SIT Graduate Institute where she looked at issues of accessibility and affordability in Brattleboro’s local food system and researched the 2014 Farm Bill during her time on campus. She also completed an independent study on a farm in Costa Rica and received her Permaculture Design Certificate. Mae has recently returned to Vermont after traveling to Vietnam, Morocco, and Bolivia as the Trustees’ Fellow on the International Honors Program on Climate Change. She is passionate about finding solutions to the climate crisis and is interested specifically in how local food can be a part of that solution.

• Heather Hyden will be Louisville, KY’s Site Coordinator. Heather has seven years of community organizing experience and has worked on food systems development since 2010. She founded the Nashville School Garden Coalition in 2010, where she worked with community partners to develop curriculum and institutionalize a support system in Nashville Public Schools. In 2012 she moved to Louisville, KY and began work for Community Farm Alliance, a 30 year old Kentucky-based non-profit focused on supporting small farmers through leadership development and legislative advocacy. In this role, she supported 3 community food system assessments in rural areas, developed the Kentucky Food Policy Network and could often be found in the halls of the General Assembly meeting with legislators. In addition to statewide work, she has been actively involved in the Louisville Food in Neighborhoods Coalition, La Minga Farm Cooperative and New Roots Inc. Heather is now a full-time student and is teaching a graduate level Community Engagement course, where a team of students will be helping to start a Lexington Fresh Stop modeled after the success of New Roots Fresh Stops in Louisville.

• Ariel Kagan is the Washington, D.C. Site Coordinator. Ariel recently completed her Masters of Food and Resource Economics at the University of British Columbia and lives in Washington. During graduate school, Ariel co-founded and led the Reading Group, a weekly morning meeting over coffee where students discussed new articles from relevant journals. While at Mount Holyoke, Ariel was the president and co-founder of the Food Justice Society (FJS), a group of 20-30 students who managed the Student Garden on campus and organized potlucks, iron-chef cook offs, and garden workdays. She worked for the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development in Washington. She has also worked as a Graduate Research Assistant with the Fisheries Economics Research Unit in Vancouver.