I am an educator. I aim to inspire and empower food and farm entrepreneurs with a holistic understanding of their beautiful business. I am a perpetual entrepreneur, a winemaker’s wife, a teacher’s daughter, a mother, a grower, a recovering restaurateur, a dedicated responsible carnivore, a willing chicken eviscerator, an oyster shucker, an ad hoc olive pruner, a parishioner of nature, a systems addict, a curious learner, and a nomad. My hands are always in the dirt and my skin in the game.
My love of agriculture was born in my father’s tomato garden in California and my uncle’s backyard vineyard in Italy, and I began farming full-time at the age of 24. In 2005, I moved to Georgia to found Farm 255, a groundbreaking “farm-and-table” restaurant and bar in Athens, Georgia with its own organic vegetable farm and cooperative pasture-based meat business. We launched its subsequent spin-off Farm Burger, currently operating multiple locations in the southeast. In 2013 I became President and partner of San Francisco-based firm Just Fare, helping to transform Fare from a consultancy into a full-service local and sustainable food management company. I founded my own consultancy in 2016 in order to focus on teaching farmers, ranchers and food business operators to be holistic thinkers, savvy business-people, and engaged community leaders. I take a deeply collaborative approach to all projects, simultaneously teaching and learning, while empowering entrepreneurs and strengthening organizations. I frequently partner with consultant colleagues and educators with a range of expertise to fulfill project needs.
I was a founding Board member of Kitchen Table Advisors, have served on the Advisory Board of the National Farm Viability Conference, and have served as an advisor and community organizer for grassroots, non-profit organizations including Slow Food, CUESA, The National Young Farmers Coalition, Georgia Organics, Compassion in World Farming, and The Greenhorns. As I am fiercely nomadic, I take on projects across the United States and split my time between western Sonoma County, California and our family’s rural home base in Italy.