Staff

The Sustainable Food Lab is supported by a secretariat drawn from a partnership among Ag Innovations Network, Karp Resources and Reos Partners.  Ag Innovations Network (AIN) is the managing partner of the secretariat, and Hal Hamilton and Don Seville are the co-leaders of the Food Lab.

Reos Partners provides process design and meeting facilitation expertise. Karp Resources provides direct services to members and identifying regional sourcing opportunities. 

A Steering Committee, comprising current SFL members, provides oversight to the Lab, establishes budget priorities, assists with fundraising, and shares the Food Lab stories with a broader audience.

The Food Lab is staffed by the following:

Hal Hamilton, Co-director

 Hal is the co-director of the global Sustainable Food Laboratory, a multi-stakeholder project with the mission of innovating ways to increase the sustainability of the mainstream food system.

From 2001 through 2006 Hal was the Executive Director of Sustainability Institute, succeeding Donella Meadows. Hal’s background also includes commercial farming, farm organization leadership, creation of rural development and leadership initiatives, and speaker and consultant to many foundations and agricultural development organizations.
 
Hal’s education was at Stanford University and the State University of New York, Buffalo. He has written numerous columns and journal articles and three chapters in books on agricultural policy and change. He is a proud father and grandfather, and he lives in an eco-village on a working farm in Vermont.

Don Seville, Co-director

   Don is the co-director of the Sustainable Food Laboratory, a multi-stakeholder project with the mission of innovating ways to increase the sustainability of the mainstream food system. He is leading the Sustainable Livelihoods Initiative, which is developing partnerships between companies and NGOs to pilot innovations that improve the competitiveness and sustainability of small-scale farming systems.  Within the Food Lab Don is also managing the “New Business Models for Sustainable Trading Relationships” project, a 4 year project with NGO and corporate partners to improve market access and livelihoods of small scale producers in Africa in crops including cocoa, dried beans, bananas, and fresh vegetables.

Don received his M.S. in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 and has worked extensively with the Society for Organizational Learning. In 1997, he helped found the Sustainability Institute and Cobb Hill Co-housing, a farm based “eco-village” in Hartland, Vermont where he currently lives with his wife, son and daughter and is learning to raise sheep.

Susan Sweitzer, Program Manager

 Susan has been part of the Sustainable Food Lab staff since it’s founding in 2004. Initially she was the Learning Historian, documenting the challenges and discoveries in the words of the members of the Lab. More recently she has been instrumental in working in Value Chain projects, leading Learning Journeys, managing communications and management systems for the Food Lab. 

Previously, Susan Sweitzer was a writer, researcher and program evaluator for the Sustainability Institute. In that capacity she wrote the Learning Histories for the Sustainable Food Lab, the CDC Diabetes Systems Modeling Project and the Meadowlark Project as well as authoring the monthly Sustainability Institute newsletter. For 10 years in the 1990s Susan developed and managed low income rural/urban public health projects and served as a clinical nurse in a public health setting.
 
Susan has a B.S. in Psychology from Earlham College and a B.S.N. from Eastern Kentucky University. Susan currently lives on a farm based eco-village where she raises Icelandic sheep and produces maple syrup.

Daniella Malin, Project Director, Agricultural Climate Stewardship Project

Daniella is a project leader with the Sustainable Food Lab and in charge of the Food Lab’s new climate initiative. Daniella brings a background in project management, cultural communications, journalism, environmental education, computer science, farming and 6 years of research on a variety of food, agriculture and sustainability related topics. Prior to her work at the Sustainable Food Lab, she wrote software on a three-person team to monitor and control the world’s largest millimeter-wavelength radio telescope currently under construction in Mexico.
 
Daniella received her B.A. in Literature and Society from Brown University.

Stephanie Daniels

   Stephanie has a background in sustainable supply chains and ethical purchasing in the food sector. Her expertise is in sourcing from low resource farmers in developing countries, with a core focus on cocoa.
 
Before joining the Sustainable Food Lab, Stephanie operated a consulting business focused on supply chain development and management in alignment with social and environmental impact goals. Prior to this, she managed procurement and farmer services from 1996-2002 at Boston-based OCP Chocolate.
 
She holds a B.S in Environmental Studies/Wildlife Biology from the University of Vermont, a M.A. in International Development from Clark University and a graduate certificate in Organizational Management from Boston College. Her graduate research focused on rural business development with Ecuadorian smallholders as a NSEP David L. Boren fellow.

LeAnne Grillo, Learning Journey and Meeting Production

Karen Karp, Member services, Regional Sourcing

Joseph McIntyre, Ag Innovations Network Director, Master Facilitator