William Welsh

William Welsh, Lansing, Iowa (Acting President)
Mr. Welsh was born and raised on a farm in northeastern Iowa. He started farming in 1955, using chemicals until 1981 when he found out that those chemicals were the same ones he learned about as an instructor in atomic, biologic, and chemical warfare (weapons of mass destruction) while in the Air Force. It was through that discovery that the Welsh family decided that they must find a way to farm without chemicals. The Welsh's became a certified organic farm in 1981, which Mr. Welsh says "was the best decision we ever made." He is a longtime leader in the organic community, a founder of the nation's largest organic farmer-own cooperative, and served on the National Organic Standards Board from 1997 to 2001.

Steve Sprinkel

Steve Sprinkel, Ojai, California - Organic Vegetable Producer/Certification Inspector

Mr. Sprinkel is a Harvard-educated author and organic farming consultant. He advises producers in the areas of production, handling, processing, and certification. He has farmed organically for over 30 years and also operates an organic-based grocery and restaurant, The Farmer and Cook, with his partner, Olivia Chase. He writes a monthly organic farming column for one of the preeminent sustainable farming journals in the country, Acres USA.

Roger Featherstone

Roger Featherstone, Tucson, Arizona (Treasurer)
Mr. Featherstone grew up on a small family dairy farm in southern Wisconsin that has been operated continuously by the Featherstone family since 1847. His rural Wisconsin farm background has been instrumental in his success in working with rural constituencies to protect wildlife and wildlands for future generations.

Since May of 2004, Mr. Featherstone has been the Southwest Campaigner/Circuit Rider for Earthworks, working to protect communities and the environment of the West from the impact of hard rock mining. Prior to this he spent a year in Alaska as the Campaign Director for ARM. In 2001, Mr. Featherstone was the Stop the Rollbacks Campaign Manager for the Mineral Policy Center campaign. In 1995 he founded and directed the Grassroots Environmental Effectiveness Network (GREEN), based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As Director of GREEN, Mr. Featherstone built a nationwide network of farmers and ranchers working to protect wildlife and wildlands.

Mr. Featherstone has been National Grassroots Coordinator of the Endangered Species Coalition; is a founder and Board Chair of the Mount Graham Coalition; was founder and producer for the GreenFire Project, an educational and inspirational organization that promoted wilderness values; and organized for both the Rainforest Action Network and Earth First! He also has worked on and off for 27 years with Northern Thunder, a Wisconsin-based community environmental organization.

Bill Heart

William Heart, Ashland, Wisconsin Mr. Hart is a hunter and fishermen and a very active member and officer of a number of conservation, environmental, and watershed protection organizations. He is past president of the Wisconsin chapter of Trout Unlimited. It is our thesis that organic agriculture is the best thing that ever happened to wildlife and he wholeheartedly agrees. A commercial printer by trade, he previously owned a printing company in Ashland and also produces maple syrup on his land in northern Wisconsin.

Michael Herron

Michael Herron, Hanover, New Hampshire Dr. Herron is an Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. He previously taught at Northwestern University and has been a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University. Herron's research interests involve applied statistics in political science, and at present he is studying ballot abnormalities and legislative redistricting. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation. He and his family have a strong interest in kosher and organic food production.

Goldie Caughlan

Helen Kees

Helen Kees, Durand, Wisconsin Ms. Kees is an organic beef farmer and fresh-market vegetable producer. She grew up on a dairy farm near Durand, Wisconsin. A tussle with a neighbor's pesticide overspray in the early 1990s opened her eyes to the health and environmental concerns associated with the use of agrichemicals. She later became the first certified organic beef farmer in the state of Wisconsin.

The cattle are raised on the family farm. She is a direct marketer and a member of the Coulee Region Organic Produce Pool.

Ann Lazor and Husband John

Anne Lazor, Westfield, Vermont
Ms. Lazor operates Butterworks Farm with her husband, Jack. They started farming in 1979 when they left their teaching jobs and began making a variety of dairy products from the milk produced by their three family cows. They made butter, yogurt, and cottage and farmer's cheese on their kitchen stove and delivered these products and bottled raw milk to twenty-five families within ten miles of their farm, in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The little business evolved gradually to the point where they began selling products to local food co-ops and health food stores. By 1984, the Lazors became licensed by the Vermont Department of Agriculture to, says Ann, "process our cows' milk into yogurt and bottled cream in a little 'factory' in the upstairs of our barn."

During the past twenty years the business has steadily grown. Their herd of Jersey cows has grown from the original three to about forty-five. For a number of years, they have produced Vermont's "number one" selling yogurt in quarts. Now this distribution has expanded to reach many of the eastern states through distributors such as United Natural Foods.

Lynn Christianson

Lynn Christianson is a Research Associate and provides staff administrative support. She has a B.A. in Philosophy from Luther College in Iowa, where she focused on environmental philosophy, ethics, and metaphysics. Ms. Christianson also studied theatre and dance while in college, which helped her later gain professional experience in marketing, grant writing, and business.

She has several years experience in administration, having worked for an international engineering firm in Seattle. She also started a "green" team in this office and introduced sustainable concepts to the corporate office. While living in the Northwest, Ms. Christianson was deeply affected by the region's connection with the land, value in community, and local food politics. Her return to her homeland of rural Wisconsin helped integrate these values and has given them meaning. She now resides in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Gayle Nielsen

Gayle Nielsen is the membership coordinator. She has a BA in Visual Communications, with a digital design emphasis, from American Intercontinental University as well as an Associate of Science in Electro-Mechanical Technology. With a black belt in several martial arts, she teaches those as well other types of mind/body/spirit movement and exploration through her hypnotherapy practice. She is also currently finishing her work on a PhD in Clinical Hypnotherapy.

After a sixteen year career with a large corporation in the Information Technology field, she now focuses on her true passion of educating people in healthy, sustainable lifestyles through her practice and through her work with The Cornucopia Institute.

She and her husband live on a small farm near Westby, Wisconsin.

Caralea Arnold

Caralea Arnold grew up on her family's organic dairy farm in the scenic hills of Central New York. Homeschooled from the age of six onward, she spent her days playing and learning with a freedom that rivaled the beauty of the landscape that she lived amid.

Merging her love of everything social, with her commitment to sustainable agriculture and the success of family farming, Caralea has worked at numerous farmers' markets throughout the Eastern US, interned on various organic farms, and spent six months working with the public interest and advocacy non-profit the Center for Food Safety in Washington, DC.

Ms. Arnold currently resides in Philadelphia, PA. where, in addition to her work on membership and research with the Cornucopia Institute, she is employed by an organic, local foods grocery delivery business.

Charlotte Vallaeys

Ms. Vallaeys is a Farm & Food Policy Analyst for The Cornucopia Institute. Ms. Vallaeys recently completed two Master's degrees: a Master of Science in Agriculture, Food and Environment from Tufts University and a Master of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School.

The focus of her academic work has been on ethical concerns with agricultural policy. Charlotte has worked with the Community Food Security Coalition on the Farm & Food Policy Project, where she helped develop a policy paper on "Making the Case for a Local Food System." As a Graduate Research Assistant, she collaborated on a USDA-funded project that seeks to strengthen the animal welfare standards of the National Organic Program. She also spent many hours between graduate classes as a farmhand on an organic vegetable CSA farm just outside Boston.

Ms. Vallaeys lives with her husband, Will, in Concord, Massachusetts.

Amy O'Connor

Amy O’Connor is Cornucopia Institute’s Outreach and Development Director.

For more than 20 years, Ms.O’Connor has been an activist and development professional in the nonprofit sector. For the past thirteen years, Amy has been an Organization Development Consultant operating her own business and serving hundreds of organizations, primarily conservation and environmental groups. In this capacity, she utilizes training, facilitation and coaching to build the financial and organizational stability of nonprofits by improving and integrating three important areas: planning, membership and board development, and communication.. Her areas of expertise include strategic planning, fundraising planning and implementation, membership recruitment and cultivation, message development, major donor stewardship, and board development.

Ms. O’Connor is an avid gardener and loves adventure travel. When time permits, she and her husband block up time to backpack and kayak. Some of their greatest wilderness adventures have taken them backpacking along the rim of the high plateaus from Capitol Reef National Park to Zion National Park; kayaking down the spring runoff of Utah's Dirty Devil and Muddy Creek; seakayaking along the Gulf of Alaska from Whittier to Homer; seakayaking in Baja, Mexico, and the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia; and exploring the far reaches of Panama's Darien jungle and its native cultures.

John E. Peck

Dr. John E. Peck, Executive Director of Family Farm Defenders

John E. Peck grew up on a 260 acre farm in central Minnesota, has a B.A. in Economics from Reed College and a PhD in Land Resources from UW-Madison. He has been the executive director of Family Farm Defenders for the last decade, and is also a part-time instructor of Economics and Environmental Studies at Madison Area Technical College (MATC).

His graduate school research focused on community-based management of common property resources in Zimbabwe. He attended the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 as a U.S. student delegate, worked for the United Nation Development Program (UNDP) in Zimbabwe, participated in citizen global justice events surrounding the WTO meeting Seattle in 1999, as well as FTAA meetings in Quebec in 2001 and Miami in 2003. He has also been part of sister city delegation to Ainaro, East Timor in Aug. 2005, as well as a farmer solidarity delegation to Oaxaca, Mexico in Jan. 2008.

Family Farmer Defenders is a national nonprofit grassroots organization based in Madison, WI that promotes sustainable agriculture, rural justice, workers rights, animal welfare, consumer safety, fair trade, and food sovereignty. Since its founding fifteen years ago, Family Farm Defenders has been dedicated to empowering farmers and consumers towards reclaiming their local food/farm systems. Family Farm Defenders has several thousand members nationwide and as part of Via Campesina, Family Farm Defenders also works closely with farmer/peasant/indigenous organizations in other parts of the world. As a North American delegate for Via Campesina, John participated in the Nyeleni Food Sovereignty Conference in Selingue, Mali in Oct. 2008, the Fifth Conference of Via Campesina in Maputo, Mozambique in Oct. 2008, as well as the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP15) in Copenhagen, Denmark in Dec. 2009.

During the summer, John goes home to help out at his folks' farm, and coordinates a summer science camp for inner city youth through St. Cloud State's Ethnic Studies Program. He also tries to escape to the Boundary Waters and Isle Royale whenever he can.

Jim Munsch

Mr. Munsch raises organic beef on his farm in western Wisconsin. He is a volunteer for The Cornucopia Institute and is leading the organization's challenge to the USDA's approval of Monsanto's genetically engineered alfalfa. Cornucopia is a party along with several other organizations in a lawsuit contesting the USDA action. Mr. Munsch farms with his family near Coon Valley, WI.

Gary Cox

Mr. Cox is a volunteer who has been handling Cornucopia's legal representation before USDA and in federal district courts. A native of Columbus, Ohio, Gary Cox has been a public servant, an organic vegetable farmer, a dad, a civil war enthusiast and very "green" all his life. As an environmental lawyer, Mr. Cox prosecuted polluters for 14 years while with the Ohio Attorney General's office, representing Ohio EPA and prosecuting several of the largest Fortune 500 firms in the country, including lawsuits against Sun Oil Company, General Motors, BP Chemical and Phillips Electronics.

His current law practice includes clients such as small, family dairy farmers producing raw milk that are battling the Ohio Department of Agriculture, a non-profit organization taking on Horizon Dairy, and several individuals battling the Ohio Department of Transportation. Mr. Cox resigned from the AG's office to become an organic vegetable farmer and sold produce at restaurants, farmers' markets and operated a small CSA as well. He enjoys being a soccer dad (yes, he owned a minivan at one time), gardening, the outdoors and has studied the Civil War nearly his whole life. Mr. Cox hopes to return to sustainable farming someday, hopefully near Gettysburg, PA, and living in peace and quiet where he can nurture rather than litigate.

Celeste Gibson

Celeste Gibson acts as Cornucopia staff accountant and serves as an active member of its management team and fiscal issues.

As an independent Certified Public Accountant, Ms. Gibson has provided tax and accounting services to individuals, farms, and small businesses in southwestern Wisconsin since 1994. She holds degrees as a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and a Master of Business Administration, both earned summa cum laude at Minnesota State University-Mankato. She passed the Uniform Certified Public Accountant Examination in 1984, earning an Elijah Watts Sells Award for grades among the top 1% in the nation.

Ms. Gibson has two daughters, one a senior at Minnesota State University-Winona and the other a sophomore at Viroqua High School. As a licensed foster care provider, she is also raising her foster daughter, a high school freshman. Her extensive community service background includes service as an elected public school board member and as a court-appointed special advocate. Her favorite hobbies are gardening and bicycling. As a lifelong learner whose interest is sparked by all pursuits intellectual, Ms. Gibson is a third-year independent study law student at Taft Law School of Santa Ana, California.