Board of Directors

Alison Snow grew up in Mount Pearl in a family of seven. She was always keenly interested in volunteering in the community and in entrepreneurism, both of which she began at a young age. She graduated from Mount Pearl Central High (now Mount Pearl Senior High) in 1986 and went on to attend Memorial University while working in various roles. She later enrolled at Cabot College (now College of the North Atlantic), earning a diploma in Computer Studies (Co-op) in 1998. Alison began her career in IT at what is now Bell (formerly xwave) and currently serves as a Systems Analyst at Memorial University. Her primary responsibilities include supporting various administrative departments at the University, including the Registrar’s Office and the Marine Institute. In addition to her professional work, Alison has been an active volunteer with many organizations, including Chair of the Memorial Community Garden Board, where she played a key role in garden initiatives such as expanding the garden—doubling the number of available plots from 30 to 60—and constructing a greenhouse for members. She was also involved with the Memorial Campus Food Bank, helping establish a connection between the food bank and the MUN Community Garden to encourage donations of surplus crops. She and Dan Rubin were co-founders of the Food Producers Forum in 2019, along with a core group of Directors, some of whom are still part of the Board. Alison, as Chair, has been very involved in almost every aspect of the Food Producers Forum and thoroughly enjoys seeing concepts help increase food production, security and sovereignty come to fruition. While Alison is a lifelong resident and spirited supporter of Newfoundland, one of Alison’s passions is travel, sparked by a summer residence in St. Pierre et Miquelon as part of her high school French curriculum and living in Ottawa for short periods during her Computer Studies program. She has traveled extensively, visiting various parts of Europe, the United States, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and almost all the provinces of Canada. She has passed her love of travel and adventure on to her children, and they now enjoy exploring new destinations to visit.

Atanu is originally from India, where he studied medicine and public health. He completed environmental studies at Queen’s University before joining Memorial University as a faculty member. He has served with the United Nations for various health projects. Atanu holds a MBBS degree in Medicine (Burdwan University, India 1992); PhD in Public Health (Jawaharlal University, 2005); Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies (Queens University Kingston 2010). He has published extensively in a series of studies about the impacts of environmental contaminants on human health. Currently he teaches public health for undergraduate medical students and graduate students in public health. Atanu Sarkar has been involved in food security related activities for decades, working in India, Ethiopia and in Newfoundland. He has worked with various community-based organizations and individuals, such as greenhouse projects for more than five years, in various capacities. He edited a volume on climate change, food security and adaptation with contributions by researchers from 18 different countries. He recently led a project to study food insecurity among the single parents and seniors in St John’s, a project was funded by Harris Centre at MUN. The article about that research was just published. He has also supervised a graduate student exploring the food culture of Newfoundland and has published in Newfoundland Quarterly. With two grants from the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR), Atanu has worked on promoting community based food production in the Mi’kmaq community at Conne River. A second project there is still ongoing. Currently, he is faculty sponsor for the project funded by the MUN Office of Public Engagement that is building the Earth Sheltered Greenhouse for public demonstration of year round food production at the O’Brien Farm in St. John’s.

As an accomplished professional with a background in government, technology, and stakeholder engagement, Bradley thrives on building teams and driving impactful initiatives. His career spans diverse roles in both public service and private sector consulting, where he has collaborated with clients across three continents. Currently, Bradley manages Big Feed Club Grocery Delivery, a carbon-neutral company committed to providing a living wage while delivering food and other products across the island of Newfoundland. Bradley's expertise lies in communications, policy development, digital strategy, and entrepreneurship. He has extensive experience in managing technology-focused teams, creating and disseminating compelling content, and providing media training for politicians. In his former role as Director of Communications and Digital Strategy for the Office of the Official Opposition, he was responsible for strategic messaging, media relations, and content management. He has also led policy and research activities, drafted legislative content, and spearheaded election platform initiatives. His private consulting practice has allowed hm to innovate in developing technology infrastructure and creating effective campaign strategy, by delivering successful persuasion and outreach campaigns. Bradley Russell has. been honoured as Programmer of the Year by the Canadian Association of Campus Activities and has previously managed high-impact projects like the COVID-19 Booster Bot and the Budget 2016 Calculator, featured by CBC News. He is a welcome addition to the Board of Food Producers Forum, always hard working and creative in whatever he takes on.

Jeremy grew up in St. John’s and spent summers at his family’s Mt. Scio Farm. He enjoyed biking and being outdoors as much as possible. He attended high school then studied science at Memorial University and agriculture at McGill. These days he is involved in running the family farm, growing summer savory and is responsible for drying and packaging this beloved local herb. He was involved in a successful challenge to a group of American mobsters who wanted to import and burn US garbage here. Now he realizes that by doing this he saved his own children from the impacts of this highly polluting activity, creating a better place for them to live. Jeremy has spent time in Costa Rica where he has travelled more than once, marveling at seeing people living closer to the soil, surrounded by so much biodiversity. Jeremy brings to the Food Producers Forum decades of hands-on experience in agriculture. On a practical level, as a person directly involved in agriculture, Jeremy sees this work as wealth creation, and a way to use our resources more efficiently. He understands the medium and larger scale potential for food production here. At that scale, what is really needed are more opportunities for incubation of new ideas and exchange of information to help everyone food move forward to become more diversified and more productive. He believes that the Food Producers Forum is a critical missing piece that can make a huge difference to agriculture and local food security. Rather than exchanging abstract or academic information, we can share practical tips and exchange better methods for growing, storing and distributing food. There are ways we can move ahead through small-scale inventiveness applied to the devices we use. Small improvements can generate real efficiencies and success.

Greg grew up in Springdale, Newfoundland and moved to St. John’s to go to MUN. In his twenties, he co-owned and operated Fixed Coffee and Baking on Duckworth Street, which put him in touch with local food producers and the very special 2010s St. John’s restaurant/food scene, of which Fixed was a daytime hub. Being connected to and daily in the midst of community at the cafe instilled in him a sense that this was how life should be lived. Post-Fixed, Greg spent some years in Toronto teaching English to international students seeking Canadian student visas, which he continued to do online in the post-pandemic years back in St. John’s. This shift in career from local to global was enriching, but the pull back to a more grounded, local focus has led him back to food, and the Food Producers Forum. While decidedly a beginner in the worlds of gardening and agriculture – with only a couple years of raised bed veg and herb growing and a 4-month stint driving a tractor on an Australian zucchini farm a bunch of years ago – Greg was drawn to join the Food Producers Forum because its existence is a demonstration that we already possess the capacity, knowledge, and skills needed to simultaneously lessen our dire dependence on imported foods and make ourselves healthier, and that doing so will lead to the building of networks of care and resources that the present and future will increasingly call for. Such networks and the communities they mutually aid can be ways of not just sustaining ourselves but sources of joy, solidarity and togetherness of a type too often absent in these times.

Cole is a teacher at Holy Heart of Mary High School, where he has been teaching Industrial Arts and Biology for the past three years. His training has included undergraduate degrees in Ecology and Conservation Biology, as well as his training in Education. He holds a Diploma in Technology Education and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Counseling Psychology at Memorial University. In addition to the teaching career, He has been an avid gardener for many years. Growing up on the Burin Peninsula gave him a deep appreciation for sustainable agriculture, and he has brought this passion with him to the city, where he continues to poke holes in the ground, wherever he can find soil and seeds. Early in his teaching career, he had the privilege of helping O'Donel High School establish its first community garden. Through fundraising, by recruiting passionate students, he was able to support the creation of a greenhouse, and transform that space into a thriving educational resource. O'Donel High School was subsequently recognized as a Champion School by MMSB and later hosted the signing ofa proclamation for Composting Awareness Week by Education Minister Bernard Davis. Since joining Holy Heart, Cole has worked to harness the potential of the surrounding green space for food sustainability projects. In 2022, Holy Heart received a "Farm 2 Cafeteria" grant, which enabled hm to build eight raised garden beds. The 2022-2023 growing season was a great success, and with the harvest that resulted, as well as donations from local sponsors, the school hosted several free meal days (serving tacos and salads from the garden to more than 1,200 students. They were also able to supply neighboring seniors in an assisted living facility with fresh greens throughout the summer. Moving forward, Cole is aiming to exand the garden initiative and integrate food security education into classrooms across the province, in partnership with the Food Producers Forum.

Anita is a Chartered Professional Accountant with more than 15 years of experience in public accounting in the small business sector, with experience in audit and assurance. Originally from the Netherlands, she emigrated to Canada at a young age, and worked in her family's restaurant, bakery, and hotel in Northern Ontario. She moved to Flatrock 25 years ago, where her family operated a convenience store, B&B, and then purchased their current large farm. Anita is co-owner of a 400-acre commercial farm in Portugal Cove, NL, where she works alongside my husband and son. Windy Heights Farm producers mushrooms, grows crops and forage and raises animals while aiming to make all of this sustainable both financially and ecologically. Anita is passionate about sustainable, regenerative practices in food production. She is a strong voice advocating for NL food producers, and aims to support the goal of making our province self-sustaining in food production.

Angela feels blessed to have grown up in Mount Pearl, NL with a large family on a large plot of land in the middle of the city. Her parents were one of the first homeowners in what was called Glendale. They were originally from the bay and continued to garden, fish, hunt and forage while living in Glendale, the town that was later renamed Mount Pearl. Angela grew up growing and preserving food, composting and recycling long before it was the trendy thing to do. She started university education at Memorial University, then she moved to Edmonton to finish an Education degree. She lived in Alberta, raising a family, and teaching in. the Edmonton schools ,for the next 34 years, but she spent her summers in Newfoundland with family and friends. Angela has always loved gardening with her family while growing up, so she continued to tend a home garden in Edmonton. She also brought nature into her classroom, creating and implementing an Outdoor Classroom while she was teaching young children in Kindergarten. When she retired from teaching, she and her husband moved back to Newfoundland permanently. Around their new home in St. Philips, they have been creating a Permaculture Food Forest.. Angela is intensely aware of the challenge of food insecurity for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and has been looking for ways to do something about this, after she moved home. She has joined the Board of Food Producers Board to help ease some of the burdens that small- and large-scale food producers are facing in this province. She strongly believes that everyone has a right to grow food and to become self-sustaining.

Born and raised in Mauritius, Megane embarked on a journey to Newfoundland to pursue her passion for engineering at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Now in her second year, she is developing a strong foundation in mechanical engineering, with a keen interest in applying technical knowledge to real-world challenges. Currently, she is an engineering intern at Food Producers Forum, where she contributes to projects that support local food production and sustainability. As part of the project management and communication teams, she helps coordinate initiatives, ensure effective outreach to the community, and work on our website development. Her work aligns with her broader goal of using engineering principles to drive impactful change, particularly in areas related to food security and sustainable development. Through this role, she is gaining valuable hands-on experience in project management, problem-solving, and collaboration—skills that will shape her future career as an engineer committed to innovation and community-driven solutions.