Regional Organizers
Christine Johnson, Northeast Regional Organizer – christine@cofed.org
Christine Johnson is an urban food gardener, avid cook, creative writer, runner and cyclist whose interest in sustainable agriculture stems from a desire to subvert corporatism, relocalize food systems, reframe public health discourses and create alternative infrastructures that empower and sustain traditionally marginalized communities. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies and Anthropology with a minor in Urban Design from NYU. She has focused her studies and professional energy on supporting sustainable regional and urban agriculture, particularly in New York. She is interested in cooperatives as institutions that create space for difficult, progressive conversations and solutions, and she works to perpetuate those spaces by mentoring high school and college students interested in food. Permaculture principles guide much of her life, and she hopes to further her education in a way that allows her to shift investment toward land-based, community-oriented, closed-loop socioeconomic reform. She also really likes the sun and traveling by train.
Amy Hess, Northwest Regional Organizer – amy@cofed.org
Amy Hess is soon to receive her B.Sc. in Global Resource Systems from the University of British Columbia’s Faculty of Land and Food Systems. In her undergraduate years Amy served as Promotion and Outreach Coordinator on the executive board of UBC Sprouts, a cooperatively run cafe and grocery store on the UBC campus, as well as volunteering on several side projects. She has worked with food system education programs for children on an urban farm in Vancouver and is currently acting as a supervisor for the Vancouver Tool Library, a cooperative tool lending library. Amy aspires to use her background in sustainable food systems, permaculture design, ecology and culture, health and economics to create spaces for communities to thrive and celebrate the relationships between people and the biological communities that sustain them.
Anna Isaacs, Northwest Regional Organizer – anna@cofed.org
Anna Isaacs graduated from The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington in June of 2011. There, she studied locally directed development, focusing specifically on food systems and cooperative economics. She has hands on experience from working at the student-run cooperative café, The Flaming Eggplant for three years, as well as visiting and working in cooperatives in Venezuela and Peru. Organizers like Paulo Freire and Myles Horton inspire her own work. Most important to her are her family and friends! Her goals for the following year are to learn more on the fiddle, see some new places, and learn skills to be handier in her community.
Ava Churchill, Northern California Regional Organizer – ava@cofed.org
Ava Churchill graduated from UC Davis with a B.A. in World Trade and Latin American Studies in 2009. She has traveled extensively in Latin America and has a comprehensive view of development issues in a global context. Ava spent her college years living in the Tri Co-ops at UC Davis, where she headed up multiple outreach projects to preserve and recruit for her community. She has experience in cooperative development through her internship at the California Center for Cooperative Development and the CooperationWorks! co-op developer training. Ava is currently working in retail sales at Marin Sun Farms and continues to pursue her passion for cooperative development through her work as Northern California Regional Organizer with CoFED.
Janaki Jagannath, Southern California Regional Organizer – janaki@cofed.org
Janaki Jagannath received her B.S. in International Agricultural Development at UC Davis in the hopes of understanding why the U.S. insists on pushing its devastating agricultural system on the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, she is still seeking answers. She believes in students’ power to challenge dominant forms of agriculture, economics, and business widely taught in universities. She hopes to bring student voices from diverse backgrounds around the same table, with food as our connecting piece, to create rational alternatives that give our generation a chance. Janaki has worked and lived in consensus-based cooperatives for 4 years, managed a number of community gardens, and worked with the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at UC Davis. She enjoys admiring seeds, reading poetry, and spending hours around the dinner table with her family.
