Administrative Team
Sarah Hackney, Coalition Director
Sarah (she/her) oversees NSAC’s overall organizational strategic direction, administration, management, and capacity-building. Previously, she served as NSAC’s Grassroots Director for nearly 8 years, working with NSAC’s member organizations and allies to empower and mobilize grassroots food and farm voices nationwide. Raised in rural Florida, her prior work has included community-led efforts to improve small farm viability, increase fresh food access, and build leadership in rural communities in the Pacific Northwest. She holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Dartmouth College.
Hope Johnson, Program Associate
Hope works as a Program Associate with NSAC. They grew up throughout the Pacific Northwest, where culinary celebrations were an important part of their upbringing. Hope studied statistics at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN and went on to work as a data scientist for five years, most notably with the UCLA Law COVID Behind Bars Data Project. In 2022, Hope decided to pursue their passion for food and cooking and became a line cook at restaurants in New York and D.C. In the course of this work, she connected with farmers who shared the challenge of producing food for restaurants in the context of extreme weather episodes and became interested in the relationship between climate change, agriculture, and food. Throughout their career, Hope has prioritized collectivity and collaboration. While living in New York, they started a kitchen tool library, which offers strangers a way to borrow and lend kitchen tools. And since 2019, Hope has organized in solidarity with incarcerated people in New York. Their favorite activities include fermentation, cooking, reading, and making art.
Carena Miles, Operations Manager
Carena (she/they) manages administrative operations for NSAC. They grew up plucking worms from the soil and wandering through cornfields on their grandparents’ rural farmland in central Virginia, where their curiosity for plants and the environment led them to earn a B.S. in Biology from Hampton University. Soon after they interned as an AmeriCorps volunteer with the U.S. Forest Service where they did everything from repairing bridges along the Appalachian Trail to teaching environmental education lessons within national parks. For nearly a decade Carena worked within the NYC metro area food system, managing farmers markets, running community gardens, launching healthy food access initiatives with the City of Jersey City, and advocating for some of the strongest environmental justice protection laws in the nation with Ironbound Community Corporation. During this period they received their M.A. in Food Studies from New York University where they concentrated on Black Agrarianism and Cooperative Economics. Carena lends their passion and motivation for sustaining and building equitable food systems to the survival, joy, and resistance of Black and migrant farmers and workers.
Laura Zaks, Associate Director of Communications and Development
Laura (she/her) holds a Master of International Affairs degree with a focus on agricultural policy and economic development from Columbia University and a B.A. from the College of Letters at Wesleyan University. She has worked at the intersection of agriculture, climate, economic development, nutrition, and public health for more than 18 years. She has experience advancing the goals of mission-driven organizations through nonprofit management, fundraising, and strategic communications for the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, the Azuero Eco Foundation, and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, among others.
Grassroots Team
Eowyn Corral, Grassroots Co-Director
Eowyn (they/she), when not obsessing over where community organizing and building holistic systems meet, can be found with a handwork project, cooking, eating, or growing food. Most recently director of development and programs at Dakota Rural Action and a past NSAC Organizational Council (OC) member, Eowyn has focused on local & regional food systems and sustainable agriculture policy for the last 15 years. Based in the Dakotas, the occupied lands of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate (the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota peoples), Eowyn comes to this work via a love for fiber animals, seasonal foods, and textile arts. As a dedicated grassroots community organizer rooted in justice and equity, Eowyn has been invited to serve in many leadership roles in movement spaces, honing a skill to facilitate what challenges us. Originally from southern California and of Michoacán descent, Eowyn plans to find their way back to the West Coast eventually to raise animals on pasture on a multigenerational farm with their family. At NSAC she works to connect and empower grassroots food and farm groups in NSAC’s membership and the broader movement, supports the coalition’s grassroots campaigns, and stewards the Racial Justice Committee.
Stef Funk, Grassroots Co-Director
Stef Funk (she/her) is an experienced educator, event planner, and community organizer. As a proud jack of all trades, she’s held several different roles in fostering local food system resiliency, from farming to distribution to advocacy. She is passionate about cultivating spaces where people feel welcome, cared for, and well fed, and has relished the responsibility of leading the planning of the Annual Chicago Food Justice Summit for several years. Previously, Stef worked with the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, Food and Water Watch, and Plant Chicago. At NSAC, she works with grassroots staff and NSAC’s member organizations to uplift farmer’s stories and lend their on-the-ground expertise to shape stronger policies that advance sustainable and regenerative agriculture in the United States. Stef holds a degree in Environmental Science from Clark University, is an eager crafter, and cares for 13 backyard chickens on the southwest side of Chicago.
Tyler Edwards, Grassroots Advocacy Coordinator
Tyler (she/her) is a passionate advocate from North Carolina who holds a B.S. in Biology and a Science and Society Certificate from Duke University. Tyler’s interest in agriculture deepened during the pandemic as she researched racial disparities in land ownership and the impacts of industrial agriculture. While working at Tierra Negra Farm in Durham, North Carolina, she cultivated relationships with farmers and community members who practice cooperative land stewardship. After moving to Maryland, she sought out new opportunities to study regenerative agriculture at several farms in the DC area. These experiences, her commitment to racial equity, and her love for storytelling drive her approach to grassroots advocacy.
Ariana Taylor-Stanley, Grassroots Co-Director
Ariana (she/her) holds an M.P.A. and B.A. from the University of Washington. She also co-owns and operates Here We Are Farm in Trumansburg, NY, growing vegetables for CSA and farmers markets. She is active in her community as a chapter leader of Showing Up for Racial Justice and the National Young Farmers Coalition. Before moving east, Ariana farmed and coordinated policy advocacy work for two NSAC member organizations in Washington state. At NSAC she works to educate, connect, and empower grassroots food and farm groups in the northeast, leads on grassroots campaign messaging and materials, and develops organizing strategies and tactics for campaigns.
Neza Xiuhtecutli, Senior Grassroots Advocacy Coordinator
Nezahualcoyotl “Neza” (he/him) joins the NSAC team with almost 20 years of experience working in rural communities in Mexico and Central America and in the US South. His training in anthropology sparked his interest in a time-depth perspective of agricultural practices and their social implications across cultural and geographic realms. In his previous work, he served as an advocate for farmworkers in Florida and for a more sustainable food and economic system.
Policy Team
Billy Hackett, Policy Specialist
Billy (he/him) holds B.A.s in Political Science and International Studies as well as a minor in International Development and Humanitarian Assistance from the University of Florida. He unearthed a passion for equitable food systems organizing in solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, spearheading a national student campaign to advance the Fair Food Program. Before joining NSAC, Billy returned to Immokalee as a health promoter when the rural town became an epicenter for the Covid-19 pandemic. These experiences, in addition to serving as international president of a community service nonprofit in college, have informed his commitment to amplify the voices of directly impacted, underserved communities in the policymaking process. Billy staffs the NSAC Farming Opportunities and Fair Competition Committee, which focuses on key crop insurance, commodity, and competition issues.
Connor Kippe, Policy Specialist
Sophia Kruszewski, Deputy Policy Director
Michael Lavender, Policy Director
Hannah Quigley, Policy Specialist
Nicholas Rossi, Policy Specialist
Nick (he/him) holds a B.S. in Environment and Natural Resources with a minor in English from the Ohio State University. His experience spans from working on environmental education and food insecurity in Iowa to traversing the Rocky Mountains as a Wilderness Ranger with the US Forest Service in Colorado. Before joining NSAC, Nick worked on a small organic vegetable farm in central Ohio growing food and advocating for sustainable local food systems in urban environments. These combined experiences inform Nick’s approach to sustainable agriculture especially as it relates to climate change and his commitment to building resilient food systems that appropriately address the needs of first-generation farmers and historically underserved farming communities. Nick supports the coalition’s policy campaigns across several issue committees.
Jesse Womack, Policy Specialist
Jesse (he/him) grew up working as a laborer on various farms and holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Gustavus Adolphus College and a Masters in Food and Agricultural Law and Policy from Vermont Law School. After undergrad, Jesse served as an Americorps VISTA developing programming for local food farms and businesses in southern Minnesota. Jesse transitioned from that role to leading a nine-county agricultural resilience study while coordinating programming for the Feast! Local Foods Network. Most recently, Jesse worked with the Nature Conservancy in Ohio to improve water quality and carbon outcomes by promoting conservation practices to farmers.
Emerson Fellow
Kenneth Palmer
Kenneth (he/him) comes to NSAC as an Emerson National Hunger Fellow in the 30th class. He is originally from Lawrence, Kansas, and his interest in agriculture and food systems stems from his family’s history of subsistence farming near Hoyt, Kansas. Kenneth has worked on a variety of nurseries and community gardens and has a season of farming under his belt at Sacred Sun Cooperative Farm in Perry, Kansas. Kenneth is particularly interested in sustainable and regenerative farming practices, access to land for young people and historically underserved people based on his own background, corporate consolidation and influence in agriculture and elsewhere, and the interplay between humans and other animals/life forms. He has previously interned at Kansas Appleseed working on hunger issues and juvenile justice, and he was most recently a Food Recovery Specialist at We Don’t Waste in Denver, Colorado. Kenneth is looking forward to participating in a work-for-share program in the D.C. area and getting to know the ecology and beauty of the Chesapeake Bay and Shenandoah National Park. His work at NSAC aims at creating a system for tracking the organization’s interactions with coalition member organizations and improving communication and coordination across the coalition. Kenneth holds a B.A. in History and Literature and a Russian language citation from Harvard University.
Our Founding Policy Director, Ferd Hoefner
Ferd is a founding staff member of NSAC and has been a leader in the sustainable agriculture community for over 30 years. He led NSAC’s federal policy work as Policy Director from 1988 through 2016 and served as Senior Strategic Advisor from 2017-2020. He continues to mentor the coalition as an informal advisor.