Archive for category: Food & Climate

This is the story of how noticing the abundant produce on citrus trees turned into what is now a 15 year old nonprofit, Food Forward, that transports nearly 90 million pounds of food to communities in need. Join us today as Rick Nahmias, founder and CEO of Food Forward, tells us that story and gives us insider tips to starting your own nonprofit, growing a team, and building meaningful relationships that help bring food where it belongs. 

Visit our website to explore other episodes, suggest guests, offer feedback, or invite Wendy to be a guest on your podcast! 

More about Rick Nahmias: 

Before founding Food Forward in 2009, Rick Nahmias was an award-winning photographer and writer who focused on documenting the faces and stories of underserved communities. His formal training as a cook, along with his exploration of California’s agricultural workforce in his body of work entitled “The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers” gave him a deep appreciation of and involvement in both the gourmet cooking and food justice worlds. This combined with his conviction that access to healthy, fresh, nutritious food is a human right, culminated in him first founding Food Forward in 2009, then becoming full-time CEO soon after. 

Rick has spoken nationally and internationally on topics ranging from food justice to food waste to social innovation. His work has been profiled in dozens of media outlets including The Washington Post, PBS NewsHour, The Guardian, Sunset Magazine, NPR, LA Weekly, and The Los Angeles Times. Early in Food Forward’s journey, Rick served as a regional delegate to the Slow Food/Terra Madre Conference in Torino. He has been named a Draper Richards Kaplan Entrepreneur, a Ralph M. Parsons Fellow, and has won multiple Fast Pitch competitions for Food Forward in California and Texas. In the last several years he has received an inaugural Trailblazer Award by the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and the national TIAA Difference Maker award. He was named a Food Champion by the Los Angeles City Council, a Senior Fellow at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Policy, one of 40 Inspiring Leaders by the Center for Nonprofit Management, and an Impact-Maker to Watch by the LA Board of Supervisors. Rick has served on the Leadership Circle of the LA Food Policy Council since 2016, and is a founding member of the Los Angeles County Food Equity Roundtable. Most recently he was awarded a sabbatical from the Durfee Foundation as part of their 2023-24 cohort. Because of Nahmias’ vision and tireless efforts, Food Forward has become a national leader in the food recovery and equity movement, providing solutions that are cost effective, innovative, scalable, and replicable.

This episode is abundant in resources for anyone and everyone interested in food equity, health, community activism, or journalism. Corby Kummer is more than a renowned journalist and food writer, he is a changemaker working to break down the barriers to nutrient-rich and culturally-appropriate food. 

He asks the sort of perspective-shifting questions, as a writer and as the Executive Director of the Food and Society Program and the Aspen Institute, that can reframe our understanding of food access and food justice and, as he says, can help shine light where it’s not been shined before. This episode really dives into the importance of building community trust between researchers and communities and most importantly, bringing different groups together with cross-sector knowledge to create meaningful change in the food equity world. 

If you liked this episode, you may also like Episode #61 about the Fresh Food Farmacy with Dr. Andrea Feinberg, or #68 Why Study Food?

More about Corby Kummer: 

Taken directly from Aspen Institute

Corby Kummer is executive director of Food & Society at the Aspen Institute, a senior lecturer at the Tufts Friedman School of Nutrition Science, and a senior editor of The Atlantic, for which he was a longtime food columnist and originated a vertical on food, sustainability, policy, and food justice. He attended the Loomis-Chaffee School and received a BA from Yale College.

He is the author of The Joy of Coffee and The Pleasures of Slow Food, the first book in English on the Slow Food movement, and has been restaurant critic of New York, Boston, and Atlanta Magazines and a food and food policy columnist for The New Republic. One of the country’s most widely quoted experts on food justice and food culture in the United States, he is a featured commentator on food and food policy every week on WGBH’s Boston Public Radio. He has received six James Beard Journalism Awards.

Turns out, we need more wonder in our lives, beauty is a survival tool, and mushrooms are the greatest carbon-sequester solution for climate change. Learn about this and more through the words and wisdom of our guest today, Louie Schwartzberg. Louie Schwartzberg is an environmental activist, UCLA graduate, and award-winning artist, director, cinematographer. In this episode, Louie says that the messaging of the environmental movement has failed. Why? Because instead of just laying facts on the table, you have to tell a really good story to move people. And Louie tells the story of nature by capturing its abundant beauty in his breathtaking photography and videography seen on Netflix and Disney.

---

More about Louie Schwartzberg:

From Louie’s Moving Art website: Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director and producer who has spent his notable career providing breathtaking imagery using his time-lapse, high-speed and macro cinematography techniques. Schwartzberg is a visual artist who breaks barriers, connects with audiences, and tells stories that celebrate life and reveal the mysteries and wisdom of nature, people, and places.

Louie’s theatrical releases include the 3D IMAX film Mysteries of the Unseen World with National Geographic, narrated by Forest Whitaker; the theatrical feature, Wings of Life for Disneynature, narrated by Meryl Streep, and America’s Heart and Soul for Walt Disney Studios.

Louie’s three TED talks have gone viral with over 60 million combined views.Louie is currently developing Visual Healing, an immersive health & wellness program maximizing his award-winning body of work to reduce stress and anxiety. Visual Healing has been piloted at the new billion dollar Jacobs Medical Center at UCSD as well as the Dallas Center for Brain Health. It forms part of the Wellness programs at Post Ranch Big Sur, Cavallo Point Inn SF, Kamalaya Resort Koh Samui and many others. 

The Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center is partnering with Louie’s Moving Art for a research project on UCLA campus. If you would like to install Moving Art in your campus department, please email kruller@conet.ucla.edu