Board of Directors Roster 2021 - Tilth Alliance

Board of Directors
     Roster
      2021

About Tilth Alliance
Tilth Alliance works in community with Washington farmers, gardeners and eaters
to build a sustainable, healthy and equitable food future.
We use farms, gardens and kitchens as classrooms for hands-on education, teaching
agriculture, nutrition and science to people of all ages. Participants learn how to grow
food on large or small scales and to cook using nutritious, locally grown ingredients.
Together, passionate community members are creating a shift in our culture and have
the potential for great influence and change.

Tilth Alliance provides support for the farming community across Washington State
by facilitating farmer-to-farmer training, helping farmers find available farm land,
connecting consumers to farmers, and conducting an annual conference for farmer
education and networking.

Tilth Alliance deploys hundreds of volunteers and reaches many thousands of
participants through a broad variety of programs, classes and direct services.

We are based in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle, and maintain a seven acre
urban farm in the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

About the Board of Directors
The job of board members, on behalf of the internal and external stakeholders, is
to ensure that the organization’s mission is achieved. It provides governance to the
organization, represents the organization to the community, advocates for the mission
of the organization and accepts the ultimate legal authority for the organization. Board
terms are two years.

Michelle Day was appointed to Tilth Alliance’s Board of Directors in June 2020 by the
Board of Directors to fill the vacancy of the Treasurer.

Jim Baird
President
Jim was born and raised in Central Washington. He is the descendant of
four generations of farming families involved in growing crops, managing
land and irrigation projects since the 1870s. He has farmed a variety
of crops including apples, potatoes, onions, wheat, alfalfa and mixed
vegetables on 1,500 acres for over 40 years. Jim has toured agriculture
regions and consulted in food production in 20 countries around the world
and been involved with agriculture commodity groups including Growers
Clearing House, WA State Apple Comm., WA State Hay Assoc., He currently
sits on the WSU’s CSANR advisory board for agricultural research, is a
graduate of WA State Ag. Forestry program, and over the last 9 years has
created two educational farms (Cloudview Royal and Cloudview Ephrata) for
experiential farm learning and school tours.

Michelle Day
Treasurer
Michelle was appointed to the Tilth Alliance Board in June 2020 by the
Board of Directors to fill the vacancy of the Treasurer. While this is her
first experience serving on a board, she has over 25 years of experience of
organizational and fiscal management. She has served as CFO and Finance/
Business Manager across for-profit and non-profit organizations with a focus
on fiscal, grant/contract management, HR and business systems. She
connects to Tilth Alliance’s mission through her passion about access to
healthy food for all and the relationship between food and climate change.
She lives in Burien with her partner, son, cats, and dog, and loves being
part of a community where neighbors are out in their yards gardening and
growing.

Diane Dempster
Diane retired from Charlie’s Produce after 30 years as the manager of
Farmer’s Own and organic produce buyer. She currently lives in Vancouver,
WA with her partner, Chris, and three cats. She previously served on the
Boards of Tilth Producers and Washington Farmland Trust and worked for
two different Grower Cooperatives. In addition to serving on the Board of
Tilth Alliance, she serves on the Board of Friends of Clark County, Clark
Food Systems Council, the Food Policy Forum and the steering committee
for the Coalition for Organic and Regenerative Agriculture.

Julie Keeler
Secretary
Julie Keeler, a Seattle native, graduated from Scripps College and worked in
marketing and communications for a number of years. She currently works
in a local family office that invests in real estate, early stage and private eq-
uity companies. She is responsible for a range of activities including setting
priorities and strategy, managing budgets and relationship management.
Julie is also a member of Social Venture Partners in Seattle and recently

finished their Northwest Conservation Philanthropy Fellowship, a program
focused on creating strategic philanthropic leaders and improving the qual-
ity of donor impact in effecting environmental change. Growing up, Julie’s
family was interested in eating, growing and preserving healthy foods. She
is still an avid gardener, cook and busy mother.

Mike Lufkin
Mike Lufkin is the Local Food Economy Manager for King County, and is
responsible for overseeing the implementation of King County Executive
Dow Constantine’s Local Food Initiative, which seeks to strengthen the
local food economy and increase access to healthy, affordable food.
Towards that end, Mike works with food and farm stakeholders across the
county to develop and implement projects and actions that help achieve
the goals of the Initiative. Mike is an attorney by training with more than
15 years of experience helping public and private sector organizations solve
complex land and natural resource challenges, and has a long track record
of developing and managing complex projects to successful completion.

Miles Ventura McEvoy
Miles is a lover of the natural world with a passionate commitment to the
people who live close to the earth – the farmers, fishers and harvesters
that provide sustenance and life for us all. His work has been in protecting
the integrity of organic agriculture from farm to market. He has inspected
hundreds of organic farms and processors, audited certifying agents around
the world and enforced compliance with organic standards. Miles led the
WSDA Organic Certification Program for 20 years during which time he
worked closely with Tilth Producers. From 2009-2017, Miles led USDA’s
National Organic Program. Currently, Miles is training organic inspectors
and working with certifiers on ensuring compliance with organic standards,
especially with long supply chains. Miles also currently serves on the WSU
Center for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources Advisory Board and
the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements Standards
Committee.

Cynthia Nims
Food writer and culinary consultant Cynthia Nims is a lifelong
Northwesterner whose latest cookbooks, Crab and Oysters, were released
in 2016. She has authored, edited or otherwise contributed to many other
cookbooks, and served as food editor of Seattle magazine as well as editor
of Simply Seafood magazine. She is an active member of the International
Association of Culinary Professionals and Les Dames d’Escoffier Seattle,
having served as president of the board for both those organizations.
Cynthia holds the Grand Diplôme d’Etudes Culinaires from La Varenne
cooking school in France, where she worked on numerous book projects
with owner Anne Willan. She lives in West Seattle with her husband.

Clara Olivo
Clara is a social justice advocate with more than 15 years’ experience in the
food and farming industry. As a former chef instructor, she fused her farm-
to-fork passion with bringing low-income communities nutrition, gardening,
and culinary education. She is also a champion for racial equity, working
closely with executive leadership at Food Lifeline to implement change, and
fostering partnerships with farmers of color. Additionally, in 2019 Clara was
nominated to join the Washington State Food Waste Reduction Plan as a
subject matter expert in the area of hunger relief. Her vision is to improve
the food system by engaging communities with a racial equity lens.

Chris Petry
Chris Petry was born in a small farm town in Upstate New York. There were
no stop lights, but we had lots of vineyards, orchards, hippies, hay, grain,
and cattle fields. He was surrounded by agriculture but never saw a life as a
farmer when he lived there. Wanting something bigger than his hometown,
he went off to college at Penn State. His degree led him to Seattle, WA,
for an internship/career with Mountain Madness, an international mountain
guiding company. Later, he started working for Natures Last Stand in
Carnation, WA. He worked all aspects of the farm (planting, harvesting,
CSA deliveries, and two Seattle Markets) for two years until the traffic,
parking tickets, and concrete got the best of him. In 2012, he moved to
Leavenworth, WA, to live his dream farming, rock climbing, mountain biking
and skiing. He started farming there by landing an apprenticeship with
old school farmer extraordinaire Grant Gibbs at Gibbs Organics. For three
years he worked alongside Grant in his orchards, grain and vegetable fields.
Eventually, he had made great friends in town and one of them gave him
a glowing recommendation and introduced him to the owners of a bed and
breakfast, Haus Rorhbach Pension. It was then when he began his life as
a full time farmer on their 7 acre plot below their B&B. Now he can truly
focus on building a highly sustainable, productive, and profitable organic
farm! Oh Yeah! Farms offers a CSA, sells to restaurants across the state,
and vends at four Farmers Markets across the state. They grow vegetables
A-Z, and also grow grain. Chris has become fascinated with growing grain,
mainly hard red wheat for baking whole grain sourdough bread. He has
found the greatest pleasure from planting, harvesting, cleaning, milling,
and baking wheat into bread. Chris’ commitment to farming largely stems
from an unshakable feeling that his purpose, and his duty, is to provide
food for his local community and live sustainably for his world community.
He believes there needs to be more role models for not only our youth, but
for the young adults raising the youth, and the older generations wanting to
eat healthy and live sustainably. Chris wants to be a vessel for sustainable
agriculture and aims to encourage all that he encounters to care about their
food, and how it effects everything on planet Earth.

Natalie Quist
Natalie cares about where her food comes from. She values the people,
places and operations that bring healthy organic and sustainable food
to her table and community. She is an independent consultant at King
Conservation District where she provides expertise in communications,
marketing and legislative outreach. During her career as a federal employee,
Natalie was selected to participate in the Seattle Federal Executive Board’s
Associates leadership program. After years of working in public service, she
decided to shift gears and volunteered with AmeriCorps in West Virginia
and Virginia. It was there she learned how to grow organic produce and
reconnected with her love of the great outdoors. A Pacific Northwest native,
she returned home to manage SnoValley Tilth’s Carnation Farmers Market
for the 2019 season. Natalie holds a Master of Public Administration
degree from the University of Washington. Her thesis analyzed how land use
regulations impact the development of farmworker housing in Washington
state. Natalie lives in Seattle with her fiancé Steve and yellow lab Griffey.
She enjoys gardening, learning about edible native plants, and can talk
about tomatoes all day long.

Anne Schwartz
Anne Schwartz graduated with a degree in Animal Science from
Washington State University (WSU) in 1978 and has been farming in the
Skagit Valley in WA ever since. Blue Heron Farm produces certified organic
vegetables and berries marketed regionally. Anne has been active with
organic certification issues at the state and national levels, especially with
livestock issues. Anne was an active advocate in the creation of the Center
for Sustaining Agriculture and Natural Resources (CSANR) at WSU. She
served on the Board of Tilth Producers of WA for 35 years. She continues to
serve on other non-profit boards and advisory councils to promote organic
and sustainable agriculture research, and regional food systems. Her latest
focus, inspired 40 years ago by the failures of cost/benefit accounting
taught in Ag Econ classes to adequately value “externalities,” is to create
an initiative to integrate True Cost Accounting into the research and
teaching structure of the College of Agriculture at WSU. In her spare time,
she trains her Border Collies to work livestock.

Nancy Tosta
Vice President
Nancy has served on the Board of Directors of Tilth Alliance for four years,
serving as President of the Board for the last two years. She is a soil
scientist by education. She is currently retired, although is serving her
second term as a member of the Burien City Council. She had a long career
working in the public sector in natural resources management, information
technology (GIS), and regional growth management and as a consultant
to foundations and state and federal agencies. She is passionate about
cooking, gardening, photography, and grandparenting. In her next life, she
envisions being a regenerative farmer in Utah.

Craig Wright
Currently a market garden farmer, Craig grew up in Ferndale, WA,
working for his uncles on their organic vegetable farm but did not initially
pursue a career in agriculture. Instead, he pursued professional degrees
in accounting and law (practicing both) before gaining experience in
venture capital, politics and government. Additionally, he has served as
a volunteer board member for several organizations, including Amara (a
foster care and adoption agency) and the University of Washington School
of Law Foundation. After seeing the effects of climate change first-hand
in California’s Central Valley, Craig was motivated to return to his family
farm to grow great tasting, nutritious, organic produce using regenerative
and sustainable practices. Initially limiting his efforts to part time, Craig
is now a full-time market garden farmer, growing for community supported
agriculture (CSA) and restaurant customers. He welcomes the opportunity
to serve as a voice in support of organic and regenerative agriculture, help
small producers earn a living wage and work to ensure all communities have
access to locally grown, healthful, nutritious food. He splits time between a
home in the Seattle area and the family farm in Ferndale.