About Us
“You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world.”
– Angela Davis
Our Team
How We Work
We are committed to working together and collaborating with partners in a way that reflects our values.
We are a women co-led organization that uses a wide range of communications tools—including videos, radio, podcasts, social media, public speaking, writing, campaign strategy, and storytelling—for food justice and food sovereignty. Based in Chicago, Minneapolis, and the San Francisco Bay Area, we are active nationally and internationally, as well as in the communities where we live. Strategic partnerships play a central role in our work and we see ourselves as part of the fabric of a diverse and growing food movement. We take our cue about strategic priorities from frontline leaders and work to channel resources towards building the capacity of frontline movements to define their own comms strategies and shape the larger food narrative. We are committed to ongoing reflection about our work to ensure that our processes and partnerships reflect racial, economic, and gender justice as part of our broader set of values.
Our Values
- We believe in lifting up the movement, not our brand.
- We believe that art, books, and film can inspire people to create the world we need.
- We believe that white supremacy, patriarchy, and other systems of oppression are inherently connected and that struggles can and should unite against them.
- We believe that we all have a responsibility to identify and examine our own privilege.
- We believe that those most impacted by injustice must be at the forefront of making decisions about how to solve it.
- We believe that to make change we have to think about capitalism and how power operates globally.
- We believe that diversity is the basis for health and resilience.
- We believe that each one of us has a story to tell, and that sharing our stories builds communities and movements.
- We believe that “real food” is delicious, honors the earth, feeds body and soul, oppresses no one, pays a living wage, and is the human right of all.
- We believe that “real media” always seeks and tells the truth.
Advisors
Neshani Jani
Neshani Jani is the Communications Director for the HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance. Neshani has nearly a decade of experience working in communications and strategic development at international and domestically-focused non-profits. Before joining the HEAL Food Alliance as its Communications Director, Neshani worked at the Institute for International Education (IIE), where she promoted the work of IIE’s 18 international offices and helped to secure funding for over 200 global programs. Neshani has long been a strong advocate for sustainable agriculture and food justice efforts and is excited to be building power with the HEAL Food Alliance—a national alliance of organizations on the forefront of food and farm systems transformation. Neshani received her BA in Anthropology and Spanish from UC Davis and MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University. She lives, works, and hangs out in Oakland, CA.
Facebook: @HEALFoodAlliance
Twitter: @HEAL_Food
Instagram: @HEALFoodAlliance
Dara Cooper
Based in Atlanta, GA, Dara Cooper is a national organizer with the National Black Food & Justice Alliance (NBFJA), an alliance of Black-led organizations working towards national Black food sovereignty and land justice. NBFJA currently has member organizations representing hundreds of urban and rural farmers, organizers, and land stewards based in all regions of the US. NBFJA members have worked together over the past few years to build an intergenerational, urban/rural alliance of organizations to map, assess, train, and deepen the organizing, legal, and advocacy work protecting Black land and work towards food sovereignty.
Dara is also an anchor team member of the HEAL Food Alliance and serves on the leadership team for the Movement for Black Lives policy table, working to link the struggle against mass police and state violence with environmental, health, and nutritional violence against Black people. She is the former director of the WK Kellogg-funded NYC Food and Fitness Partnership in Brooklyn, NY, where she worked on creating and strengthening farmer’s markets for Black farmers, developing a community-based local food hub, and creating a farm-to-headstart program. Prior to this, she led the launch and expansion of Fresh Moves (Chicago), an award winning mobile produce market with community health programming, which quickly became a nationally recognized model for healthy food distribution and community based self-determination and empowerment.
A former Uganda Bold Food Fellow, Kalamazoo Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership Food Justice Fellow, and National Alliance Against Racist Political Repression Human Rights Awardee, she believes deeply in the quote from Assata Shakur: “imperialism is an international system of oppression and, we, as revolutionaries, have to be internationalists to defeat it.”
For more information, visit: www.daracooper.com
Sriram Madhusoodanan
Sriram’s first exposure to corporate power came as a college student when he learned about the military-industrial complex through documentaries like Iraq for Sale, which exposed the rampant abuses and profiteering of defense contractors and their government cronies at the expense of people’s lives in Iraq and the United States.
At the same time, during his summers and spring breaks, he worked in homeless shelters in Washington, DC, and food banks in New York City, interacting with people who were dealing daily with systemic racial and economic inequality. In so doing, he gained visceral insight into Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s statement: “A country that spends more on war than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual decline.” As Sriram explains it, “In that moment, I understood that we cannot have a society that values people first or prioritizes equity until we challenge head on the power of corporations over our government.”
After graduating, Sriram brought his growing desire to challenge corporate power as a Green Corps organizer where, in 2011, he worked on Corporate Accountability’s food campaign to expose McDonald’s health-washing tactics in collaboration with health professionals. Today, he ensures that the food and climate campaigns are driving toward impact. He is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation 2016 Culture of Health Leader. As the son of immigrants, he also became an avid traveler as a young person: before turning 18, he had lived in eight cities across four countries and three continents.
Naomi Starkman
Naomi Starkman is the founder and the editor-in-chief of Civil Eats. She was a 2015-16 John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford. Naomi co-founded the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN) and has worked as a media consultant to Consumer Reports, Newsweek, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ, and WIRED magazines. After graduating from law school, she served as the Deputy Executive Director of the City of San Francisco’s Ethics Commission. Naomi is an avid organic gardener and has worked on several farms.
Anim Steel
Anim Steel is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Real Food Challenge, a campaign to re-direct $1 billion in college food purchases towards local, fair, and sustainable sources within ten years. Prior to Real Food Challenge, Anim led national initiatives at The Food Project in Boston, consulted with the Economic Development Assistance Consortium, and developed employment training programs at the Bowery Residents Committee. Anim holds a BA in Astrophysics and History from Williams College and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He is the recipient of a Prime Mover Fellowship for movement-building and an Echoing Green award for social entrepreneurship.
Twitter: @realfoodnow
Facebook: @realfoodchallenge
Esperanza Pallana
Esperanza Pallana has over fifteen years of experience in food policy, environmental health, and public health advocacy. She brings strategic leadership to her focus in community driven economic development, equitable and sustainable food systems, and racial justice. Esperanza is interested in the intersection of food justice and social investment, particularly as it applies to land acquisition and ownership of food and farm businesses by people of color. She is part of a national network of dedicated professionals building economic and political power to transform our food system.
After serving at the Director of Oakland Food Policy Council for five years, she became a Program Officer at Northern California Community Loan Fund in 2016. She also serves as chair of the Sugar Sweetened Beverages Community Advisory Board for the City of Oakland. In 2017, Esperanza was the recipient of the Cesar Chavez Award in Oakland for her leadership and community service. She also received the Oakland Local Hero award for her community work. She has an MNA from the University of San Francisco and a BA in urban studies from San Francisco State University. Esperanza is a Chicana and Caxcan, born and raised in San Francisco, CA. She grew up low income with a single mom and five brothers and sisters. She now resides in Oakland, CA, where she works passionately to ensure health, strength, and resilience in Black and Brown communities.
You can read more about some of Esperanza’s work here and here.
partners
Food Chain Workers Alliance
Over the years, the Food Chain Workers Alliance has been a close partner and ally and we’ve partnered on several projects including Voices of the Food Chain and the Good Food Purchasing Program.
The Food Chain Workers Alliance is a coalition of worker-based organizations whose members plant, harvest, process, pack, transport, prepare, serve, and sell food, organizing to improve wages and working conditions for all workers along the food chain. The Alliance works together to build a more sustainable food system that respects workers’ rights, based on the principles of social, environmental and racial justice, in which everyone has access to healthy and affordable food. Currently, FCWA has 31 members representing roughly 340,000 food workers in the US and Canada.
Center for Good Food Purchasing
We work closely with the Center for Good Food Purchasing as a communications partner for the Good Food Purchasing Program.
The Center for Good Food Purchasing uses the power of procurement to create a transparent and equitable food system that prioritizes the health and well-being of people, animals, and the environment. We do this through the nationally-networked adoption and implementation of the Good Food Purchasing Program by major institutions.
HEAL Food Alliance
HEAL Food Alliance is a multi-sector, multi-racial coalition building collective power to transform our food and farm systems. HEAL is led by our member-organizations, and strive to amplify the experience and expertise of frontline communities who are most burdened by the disparities of our current systems. Together, we are developing solutions to drive change.
HEAL’s mission is to build our collective power to create food and farm systems that are healthy for our families, accessible and affordable for all communities, and fair to the hard-working people who grow, distribute, prepare, and serve our food — while protecting the air, water, and land we all depend on.
Friends of the Earth
Our Spinning Food series, developed in partnership with Friends of the Earth and US Right to Know Network, investigates how Big Food and agrochemical corporations are deliberately misleading the public—and the media—about industrial agriculture and organic and sustainable food production.
Friends of the Earth fights to protect our environment and create a healthy and just world.
Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
US Right to Know
Our Spinning Food series, developed in partnership with Friends of the Earth and US Right to Know Network, investigates how Big Food and agrochemical corporations are deliberately misleading the public—and the media—about industrial agriculture and organic and sustainable food production.
U.S. Right to Know (USRTK) is a nonprofit organization working for transparency and accountability in our nation’s food system. Researching what goes on behind the scenes in the food industry, USRTK strives to illuminate issues important to consumers and stand up for the right to know what is in our food, and how it affects our health. USRTK believes that transparency – in the marketplace and in politics – is crucial to building a better, healthier food system, and that, together, we can create a food system that makes us healthy and strong, one that works better for all of us, our children, families, other loved ones, communities and our nation.
Corporate Accountability
Corporate Accountability has been our organizational home since we launched Real Food Media. They serve as our 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor and so much more. Their team has been a continual sounding board and partner in this work on all fronts, and especially as it relates to Corporate Accountability’s food program to put pressure on McDonald’s and other giant food corporations end their abuses of people and the planet. We’re so grateful for the continued support and camaraderie of our colleagues at Corporate Accountability over the years and look forward to more rabble-rousing together ahead.
Corporate Accountability stops transnational corporations from devastating democracy, trampling human rights, and destroying our planet. Join the global campaign.
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