Primary+Speakers

James O'Neill works at the City of Vancouver in the Social Policy division where he champions a range of food policy and urban agriculture issues. He is currently leading the public engagement aspect of the Vancouver Food Strategy. He has a passion for community development processes, collaborative decision making, and international development planning. He graduated from the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC. Graham Riches is professor emeritus and former director of the UBC School of Social Work. He has practiced community development in Malaysia, East Africa and the UK and taught at universities in Hong Kong, Australia and Canada. He has written extensively on issues of hunger, food charity and human rights including //Food Banks and the Welfare Crisis// (1986); //First World Hunger: Food Security and Welfare Politics// (1998); //Right to Food Case Study: Canada// (UNFAO, 2004) and, with Judy Graves, ‘//Let them eat starch’// (The Tyee, 2007), an account of their experiences in the food lines in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
 * James O’Neill **
 * Graham Riches **

Matthew Kemshaw coordinates the Environmental Youth Alliance's Growing Kids and Community Nursery projects. He has six years experience working in Urban Agriculture and has helped dozens of schools to develop food gardens on site. He is also a passionate advocate for food production in public commons and has worked to develop and maintain several large food forests on public lands in both Victoria and Vancouver.
 * Matthew Kemshaw **

Bethany Elliott has examined health equity, healthy public policy and food security during her graduate studies at the University of Toronto. After migrating to Vancouver, she started working with the Provincial Health Services Authority on a project exploring the importance of traditional foods to Aboriginal peoples, and the barriers and solutions to accessing these foods in an urban setting. Prior to initiating her graduate studies, Bethany worked in the international health field.
 * Bethany Elliott **

Contessa Brown is of Heiltsuk decent, and her ancestral name, given by her grandmother, is Omdmaxl. Growing up in the Heiltsuk territory on the central coast of BC, she learned how to prepare her cultural traditional foods, many of which come from the ocean. Contessa currently lives in Vancouver, which has reduced her access to her traditional foods; however, she still trades and shares her traditional foods with other Aboriginal peoples in the city. Contessa is a certified family counsellor and is pursing further education in this field.
 * Contessa Brown **

Herb comes from the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation of what is now known as the West Coast of Vancouver Island. Having grown up in the city, he doesn’t always have readily accessible traditional foods options. Herb is currently involved with peer leadership at the Urban Native Youth Association and was recently re-elected to their Board of Directors.
 * Herb Varley **

Jerry Spiegel, MA MSc PhD is Director of the Global Health Research Program and an Associate Professor in the School of Population and Public Health and the Liu Institute for Global Issue at UBC. He was founding President of the Canadian Coalition for Global Health Research and received the Canadian Public Health Association's 2011 International Award. His research focus is on sustainable approaches to promote equity and health, with active projects in Cuba, Ecuador and South Africa. He leads a recently awarded 5 year research program titled "Food systems and health equity in an era of globalization: Think, Eat and Grow Green Globally (TEG3)" that brings together researchers and knowledge users in Canada and Ecuador. ** Brent Mansfield ** Brent Mansfield is the Community Liaison and food policy lead for the Think and Eat Green at School Project. He is a graduate student in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at UBC and is Co-Chair of the Vancouver Food Policy Council.
 * Jerry Spiegel **

Nothing gets Tiffany more excited than growing good food and working with stubborn bureaucracies. Well, maybe more the first than the latter, but working with Sustainable Cities International as an urban agriculture project officer in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania definitely satisfied both requirements. Currently she is working in Uganda with African Farmer Service Centre to provide microcredit and market linkage to aspiring agri-business farmers in rural areas.Tiffany’s need for interdisciplinary learning and passion for sustainable development led her to the Global Resource Systems program at the University of British Columbia. A forager when it comes to interests, her entrée is mainly international development work in food security and agricultural issues. One day, she hopes to find ways to convince the world economic system to work in favour of the marginalized and the environment. ** Sasha Caldera ** Sasha Caldera is a graduate of Simon Fraser University and holds a degree in Political Science and an extended minor in economics. As an undergraduate, he lobbied his university to resurrect its ethical procurement committee and is working towards SFU becoming a Fair Trade campus. After graduating, Sasha co-founded Fair Trade Vancouver and leads its policy team. Sasha is pursuing a master’s degree in Intercultural and International Communications at Royal Roads University, and organizes International Development Drinks, a bi-monthly networking event to connect NGOs in Vancouver. Sean McHugh is a graduate of Simon Fraser University and holds a degree in Sociology, where political economy was his focus. Sean spent many years on this degree thanks to intermittent times of travel and several long periods spent in Kenya where he worked to develop waste management and recycling systems as small business ventures. Sean Has been with Fair Trade Vancouver since its inception and spends a good deal of his time advocating for improved trade relations, as a method to solving very complex global issues, such as poverty.
 * Tiffany Tong **
 * Sean McHugh **

Martha McMahon is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Victoria. Her current research focus is on food politics, local sustainable agriculture, agri-food governance and food sovereignty. She is particularly interested in issues of gender and food security and food sovereignty and she emphasizes the value of bringing feminist perspectives to consideration of such macro issues as the global food trade, climate change and environment. She teaches courses in sociology of the environment, gender, justice and power, feminist theory and sociology of food. She was a farmer for many years and now farms part-time. Margo Matwychuk is a sociocultural anthropologist interested in issues of homelessness, poverty, food insecurity, social justice, political economy and feminism. She is currently involved in community-based research on housing, homelessness, and food insecurity in Victoria, BC. She has previously worked in Brazil on similar issues of inequality and social justice but particularly in the context of the sugar cane agro-industry in Northeast Brazil. She is a Co-Chair of the Research, Evaluation and Data Working Group of the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness. She is a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria
 * Martha McMahon **
 * Margo L. Matwychuk **