Culinary Arts: The Food Movement Leadership Project & The Sustainable Fishing Project

Our Excel­lence in Men­tor­ing Lead­er­ship pro­gram pro­vides extra­or­di­nar­i­ly tal­ent­ed young adults from dis­ad­van­taged cir­cum­stances with oppor­tu­ni­ties to con­nect with and be men­tored by dis­tin­guished glob­al leaders. 

The Food Movement Leadership Project

In 2013, we select­ed Tes­sa Tricks, a Mas­ter of Arts in Food Anthro­pol­o­gy from the SOAS Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, to work with Sarah Wein­er and the Seedling Projects orga­ni­za­tion. Tes­sa Tricks was nom­i­nat­ed by Aine Mor­ris of the Sus­tain­able Food Trust for her involve­ment with the Slow Food move­ment and her strong com­mit­ment to solv­ing food sys­tem issues.

Sarah Wein­er, Tes­sa Tricks, and the Seedling Projects leadership

Dur­ing her stay in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area and her May­bach Foun­da­tion fel­low­ship, Tes­sa forged new rela­tion­ships through her men­tor’s exten­sive net­work. She also inves­ti­gat­ed the best prac­tices of the sus­tain­able food move­ment in the U.S. and played a key role in orga­niz­ing the 2014 Good Food Awards.

As a pro­tégé of the May­bach Foun­da­tion and the Seedling Projects, Tes­sa’s men­tor­ship fur­ther includ­ed engage­ment with Food Move­ment actors, nation­al grow­ers and pro­duc­ers, as well as com­mu­ni­ty project involvement.

Tes­sa com­plet­ed her Mas­ters with a the­sis on offal and ani­mal bi-pro­duc­tion cir­cu­la­tion. She joined the Sus­tain­able Food Trust and has since worked in many orga­ni­za­tions which focus on food sys­tems issues.

Cur­rent­ly, she is the Cre­ative Part­ner at Hub­bub UK, a non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tion which com­mu­ni­cates envi­ron­men­tal issues to the pub­lic as well as policymakers.

Sustainable Fishing

In 2013, we paired Aman­da LaBelle with Monique Coombs, Direc­tor of Marine Pro­grams for the Maine Coast Fish­er­men’s Association.

Pri­or to this project, Aman­da earned her Mas­ters in Pub­lic Admin­is­tra­tion from Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty and became active in the Maine Seafood Mar­ket­ing Net­work. Both Aman­da and Monique were inter­est­ed to dive deep into the draw­backs of the cur­rent dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tem and how to sup­port the sea-to-table effort. 

Dur­ing the course of this men­tor­ship, Aman­da explored oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges for inte­grat­ing seafood into local food sys­tems, focus­ing on Maine’s rich fish­ing industry. 

In her “Inte­grat­ing Seafood Into Maine’s Food Sys­tems“ pre­sen­ta­tion above, Aman­da points out that 90 per­cent of the fish we eat is import­ed and numer­ous oth­er insights as well as com­par­isons between fish­ing and farming.