The Sustainable Food Lab is staffed by a team of dedicated professionals with offices in Vermont and supported by a partnership with Ag Innovations Network and Reos Partners. Ag Innovations Network (AIN) is the managing partner of the secretariat, and Hal Hamilton and Don Seville are the co-leaders of the Food Lab.
An Advisory Board, led by current SFL members, provides oversight to the Lab, establishes budget priorities, assists with fundraising, and shares the Food Lab stories with a broader audience.
The Food Lab is staffed by the following:
Hal Hamilton, Co-director
Hal Hamilton founded and co-directs the global Sustainable Food Lab. The purpose of the Sustainable Food Lab is to mainstream sustainability in global food supply, and its projects are all aimed at practical supply chain tools and shared learning among peers.
Hal’s career began as a commercial dairy farmer in Kentucky, and one of his proudest awards was being named Master Conservationist. While in Kentucky he led the development of the first formal alliance among tobacco farmer and public health organizations, an alliance that paved the way for hundreds of millions of dollars of tobacco settlement funds to be invested in rural communities in the upper south. He has founded and directed rural development and leadership organizations, and was the Executive Director of the Sustainability Institute founded by Donella Meadows.
Hal is a frequent guest faculty or lecturer at the MIT Sloane School of Management, the Harvard Business School, the Kennedy School, the Society for Organizational Learning, and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Hal has been an advisor to the Clinton Global Initiative for two years and recently moderated a panel that included US Agriculture Secretary Vilsack. At the invitation of the U.S. State Department in 2006 he gave the annual George McGovern address to the FAO at World Food Day. He has been a German Marshall Fellow and a Kellogg Fellow.
Hal’s education was at Stanford University and the State University of New York, Buffalo. He has written numerous columns and journal articles and three chapters in books on agricultural policy and change. Hal lives in a community in Vermont located on a farm that produces many products including an award winning cheese and maple syrup. His grandchildren are his three greatest delights.
Don Seville, Co-director
Don is the co-director of the Sustainable Food Laboratory, a multi-stakeholder project with the mission of innovating ways to increase the sustainability of the mainstream food system. He is leading the Sustainable Livelihoods Initiative, which is developing partnerships between companies and NGOs to pilot innovations that improve the competitiveness and sustainability of small-scale farming systems. Within the Food Lab Don is also managing the “New Business Models for Sustainable Trading Relationships” project, a 4 year project with NGO and corporate partners to improve market access and livelihoods of small scale producers in Africa in crops including cocoa, dried beans, bananas, and fresh vegetables.
Susan Sweitzer, Program Manager
Susan has been part of the Sustainable Food Lab staff since it’s founding in 2004. Initially she was the Learning Historian, documenting the challenges and discoveries in the words of the members of the Lab. More recently she has been instrumental in working in Value Chain projects, leading Learning Journeys, managing communications and management systems for the Food Lab.
Daniella Malin, Project Director, Agricultural Climate Stewardship Project
Daniella is a project leader with the Sustainable Food Laboratory, a multi-stakeholder project with the mission of innovating ways to increase the sustainability of the mainstream food system. She is in charge of the Food Lab’s climate initiative which aims to identify and develop financial levers to enable agriculture to play a part in combating climate change - through the supply chain and/or carbon markets. Daniella leads the Food Lab's Global Agriculture Climate Assessment, an initiative to evaluate realistic practice change options for growers in mainstream supply chains and serves as facilitator for the climate metric of the Stewardship Index for Specialty Crops, a grower driven initiative to develop performance- based sustainability measures for specialty crops. Daniella has a background in project management, cultural communications, journalism, environmental education, software engineering and farming. She received her B.A. in Literature and Society from Brown University.
Stephanie Daniels, Program Manager, Agriculture & Development
Stephanie manages Food Lab value chain partnerships focused on large-scale impact and learning on sustainable livelihoods and climate change. She has a background in sustainable supply chains and ethical purchasing. Her expertise is in sourcing from smallholders in developing countries, with a core focus on cocoa. Before joining the Sustainable Food Lab, Stephanie ran her own consulting business focused on supply chain development with companies and NGOs in alignment with social and environmental impact goals. Prior to this, she managed procurement and farmer services at Boston-based OCP Chocolate.She holds a B.S Environmental Studies/Wildlife Biology from the University of Vermont, a M.A. International Development from Clark University and a graduate certificate in Organizational Management from Boston College. Her graduate research focused on rural business development with Ecuadorian smallholder cocoa farmers as a NSEP David L. Boren fellow.
Joseph McIntyre, Senior Associate, Sustainable Food Lab, Ag Innovations Network Director, Master FacilitatorJoseph is Senior Associate with the Sustainable Food Lab as well as president of Ag Innovations Network, a non-governmental organization, focused on the sustainability of the food system. Ag Innovations Network convenes and facilitates multi-stakeholder efforts to improve the performance of the food system for producers, consumers, and participants in local, regional, and global food supply chains. Joseph is a trusted intermediary between diverse interests in the food system and has consulted/facilitated processes with large global entities such as Sodexo, cutting-edge companies such as Clif Bar, environmental organizations including National Resources Defense Council and Sustainable Conservation, prominent NGOs including Roots of Change and Sustainable Food Lab, government entities including California Department of Pesticide Regulation, trade associations such as California Association of County Agricultural Commissioners. He is the leader of multiple projects for Ag Innovations Network including the California Roundtable on Agriculture and the Environment, the state’s most prominent effort to align the interests and needs of agricultural producers and environmental organizations around a common policy platform, and the California Roundtable on Water and Food Supply. Mr. McIntyre holds an M.A. in economics from the University of Rhode Island and an M.A. in psychology/organization development from Sonoma University. Ag Innovations Network is headquartered in Sebastopol, CA.
Jessica Mullan, Program Associate
Jessica Mullan is a member of the Sustainable Food Lab's technical team on Agriculture and Climate Change. Her work at the Lab focuses on the pilot testing and adaptation of the farm level GHG calculator, the Cool Farm Tool, and the research that places the CFT results in context of published literature for particular cropping systems. Jessica also leads the broad scope research into the key sustainability issues in supply chains for branded manufacturers and food service members of the Food Lab. She has a B.A. in International Relations from Boston University, and an M.S. in International Agricultural Development from the University of California, Davis.
LeAnne Grillo, Learning Journey and Meeting Production
Karen Karp, Regional Sourcing
