Ben Kerrick is a Senior Consultant at Karen Karp & Partners (KK&P), an NYC-based national consulting firm working at the intersection of food, agriculture, and health. Ben is a public service-oriented food systems professional with extensive knowledge of and experience with diverse food system stakeholders and projects. His work at KK&P includes community engagement, placemaking, food system mapping, data visualization, program and event design, and research and analysis. Much of his work has focused on regional and community-scale projects involving multiple stakeholders, primary and secondary research, and action plans for food system initiatives. In addition to extensive work in NYC, he has managed or supported KK&P projects in Maine, Louisiana, North Carolina, Connecticut, upstate New York, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, California’s Bay Area, and the Mid-South Delta. Ben holds Master’s Degrees in City & Regional Planning and Environmental Science (Agroecosystem Science specialization) from The Ohio State University.

Arielle Lofton is an alumna of The Culinary Institute of America with years of experience in restaurant operations. Having a passion for serving local communities, she wanted to learn more about what it takes to make more sustainable, equitable, and healthy places for us all to live and enjoy. She currently attends the School of Professional Studies at George Washington University majoring in  Sustainable Urban Planning. So far, she’s worked for various local and national organizations gaining experience in supporting wildlife and environmental conservation efforts with geographic information systems (GIS), community engagement through helping manage a county-wide community garden program, and providing technical assistance and research for projects focused on transportation and land-use development initiatives. She is passionate and excited to continue learning more about the planning world and serve on the Executive Food Systems Division Board of the American Planning Association.

Andrea Petzel, AICP is founder and principal of Broadview Planning, a woman-owned consulting firm specializing in urban planning services related to land use, health and sustainability. As a senior planner for the City of Seattle, Andrea developed one of the nation’s first comprehensive urban agriculture ordinances that helped increase access to local, healthy food. She continues this work serving on the Sustainable Agriculture Committee for the state chapter of the American Planning Association. In addition to her policy work on urban agriculture, Andrea participated in the development of Seattle’s Healthy Living Assessment, a framework to assess health impacts at the neighborhood level. The project was awarded a 2013 National Planning Achievement Award for a Best Practice from the American Planning Association.

Kara Martin, AICP is the Director of the Food Innovation Network in King County, WA. For over fifteen years, Kara has been working to advance how community health and food systems intersect through the tools of community engagement, policy change, research, and partnership convening. Kara has experienced in community food systems assessments and addressing community health issues through comprehensive plans and development regulations. Currently, her work focuses on implementing community-driven food system strategies. and programs. In addition to being an American Institute Certified Planner (AICP), she attended the Built Environment Assessment Training (BEAT) Institute, where she received training in the most current tools used to evaluate the built environment’s effect on community health. She has lead the Washington APA chapter’s Sustainable Agriculture and Healthy Food Systems working group and served on the Washington State Food System Roundtable and Seattle Planning Commission.

Molly Riordan, (MRP, Cornell University) is a food systems planner with a focus on institutional procurement and food policy. She is the Eastern Region Program Manager, Healthy Food in Health Care at Health Care Without Harm, where she supports hospitals to leverage their buying power in support of equitable food system change. She is concurrently an Urban Agriculture Specialist with the Cornell Small Farms Program at Cornell University, a co-author of the 2019 report, “The Promise of Urban Agriculture: a National Study of Commercial Farming in Urban Areas.” and lead author of a chapter in the forthcoming book, Planning for Urban Agriculture in the United States (Springer). Originally from the Buffalo, NY area, Molly currently lives in Philadelphia, PA.