Talk about collective action
Meet the team behind the movement.
Our staff
Anthony Myint, Executive Director
Anthony works to mobilize the restaurant industry and allies in the public and private sectors to support healthy soil as a solution to the climate crisis. He is also a chef, who won the 2019 Basque Culinary World Prize for his work with Zero Foodprint. Anthony is known in the restaurant industry as the Co-Founder of Mission Street Food (SF Chronicle's Most Influential Restaurant of the Past Decade", Mission Chinese Food (NY Times Restaurant of the Year - 2012) and The Perennial (Bon Appetit's "Most Sustainable Restaurant in the Country"). Anthony is currently on the Board of Trustees for the James Beard Foundation
Leo Beckerman, Director of Operations
Leo ensures Zero Foodprint functions as efficiently as possible for the greatest impact on climate change. Co-Founder of Wise Sons Deli, he has experience in the front of the house, back of the house, large scale production, and back office. He loves nurturing an idea into a full blown operation, creating systems and processes for scale. In addition to restaurants and small business, Leo has a background in public health and non-profit management, and has built and managed teams on three continents.
Elaine Chen, Operations Manager
Elaine is our resident root wrangler, cultivating fertile ground for our mission to bloom. She wields spreadsheets, nurtures partnerships, and operationalizes policies into a thriving ecosystem of best practices. From Michelin-starred plates to nourishing refugee and disaster relief kitchens, Elaine’s a Swiss Army knife of operations, seamlessly adapting her skills for positive change. Whether rallying volunteers to assemble mountains of sandwiches or curating authentic experiences, Elaine is fueled by the power of collective action to build a healthier, more equitable world, one delicious, informed step at a time.
JB Douglas, Marketing and Communications Manager
JB manages our marketing and communications, from strategy and analytics to daily operations. He’s passionate about using digital media to create real-world impacts that build a better food system. His circuitous career has taken him from experiential design in the arts to regenerative farm operations, to food access education, and to foraged food media. Today, his eclectic background has made him an expert collaborator and deft at telling stories that catalyze food system transformation. JB graduated in the inaugural cohort from the Master’s in Sustainable Food Systems program at the Culinary Institute of America and has been a member of MENSA for more than a decade. He also received one of the first scholarships from Noma for their Taste Buds R&D program. In addition to his work at ZFP, JB produces and publishes wild food recipes and photography for The Wild Grocery and other foraged food media brands.
Katya Forsyth, Healthy Soils Program Manager
Katya manages the CDFA Healthy Soil Program Block Grant, helping farmers and ranchers implement regenerative practices in California. Katya’s passion for regenerative agriculture was ignited after spending 6 months living and working on a permaculture farm in rural Costa Rica in 2019. Katya then earned an MS in Environmental Science and Policy from Northeastern University, where they focused their research on circular food systems and global food sovereignty movements. Their passion for food system circularity led them to pursue a career in the compost industry, working at Kellogg Garden Products and the California chapter of the United States Composting Council. Katya is excited that their work has come full circle, while staying grounded in their commitment to building healthy soil for a better climate.
Reggie Lee, Project Manager
Reggie creates internal tracking systems and manages processes that enable Zero Foodprint to confidently assess progress for all programs and funders. He is ZFP's go-to resource for all things project management, actualizing his passion to utilize technology to increase organizational effectiveness and efficiency. Reggie has a background in data science, biomedical research, and international humanitarian aid, leading malnutrition related projects for a US based NGO in Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Malawi. During that time, Reggie led a large team of staff and community members to feed and reverse the effects of severe and moderate acute malnutrition for over 8,000 children.
Logan Mitchell, Outreach Manager
Logan is our Outreach Manager, forging connections with the west coast's confluent abundance of farms and award winning restaurants. She comes to ZFP by way of a storied career: spanning 25+ years in hospitality in both San Diego and San Francisco, a decade in home decor design and prototyping, current owner of 2 small businesses, and even a short stint on Mythbusters. She is devoted to building community through food and will be an integral part in cultivating face to face relationships in Southern California and beyond.
Tiffany Nurrenbern, Director of Programs
Tiffany manages our member network and leads the team in communicating our mission to the public. She began her career studying the history of social movements, but has spent the last 15 years putting those lessons into practice. She works on projects that aim to redefine the power of networks in the midst of generational changes in how we cooperate, communicate, and affiliate with causes and organizations. For many years, Tiffany worked at Roots of Change where she built and facilitated the California Food Policy Council, and led ROC's Urban-Rural Roundtable Program. She previously served as program director for the Farmers Guild and a campaign consultant while concurrently working front of house at a ZFP member restaurant. She has served in Slow Food leadership at the chapter, state, and international level, and is currently on the board of Slow Food USA.
Alana Williams, Restore Program Manager
Alana manages all aspects of the Restore Grant Program, with the goal of scaling internal systems to be able to fund more soil health projects. Her experience in regenerative agriculture began back in 2018 with an internship with Kiss the Ground. She then moved to New York to obtain her master’s in Food Studies at NYU, during which time she served as the policy intern for Slow Food USA. She managed farmer relations for a start-up creating a virtual marketplace for local produce, and has worked at farmer’s markets and volunteered on farms, community gardens and green roofs across the country.
Jami Witek, Grants Manager
As Grants Manager, Jami spends her days working behind the scenes ensuring our Compost Connector and Spreading Soil Wealth programs are running smoothly. She can often be found chatting with farmers about compost and helping California jurisdictions meet their SB1383 procurement goals. When she’s not talking compost, Jami can be found in her community garden plot.
Our board
Kathryn Lyddan, Chair
Kathryn has extensive experience designing, implementing and managing nonprofit and governmental agricultural conservation programs. Most recently, Kathryn served as the Director of Conservation for the Marin Agricultural Land Trust, where she managed MALT’s real estate acquisition and stewardship programs. Previously, as Director of the California’s Department of Conservation Division of Land Resource Protection, Kathryn oversaw the design and implementation of California’s agricultural conservation and resource conservation district grant programs. Kathryn also served as the Executive Director of the Brentwood Agricultural Land Trust for thirteen years. After Kathryn received her law degree from University of California Law San Francisco, Kathryn practiced municipal finance and real estate law for ten years before joining BALT.
Jeffrey Clark
Jeffrey Clark, a seasoned professional at the National Restaurant Association, specializes in food safety, nutrition, and sustainability. He fosters collaboration among industry experts through focused gatherings that address pressing challenges like sustainable packaging and food safety policy. Mr. Clark creates research reports, educational videos, and case studies on best practices, including minimizing food waste and combating seafood fraud. As a sought-after speaker, he shares his passion for sustainability at various events and works on improving local food systems for low-income communities. He served three years on the Montgomery County Food Council, acting as secretary to the board, where he helped the organization transition into a 501(c)3 nonprofit. Mr. Clark completed his Master’s in Public Policy from Duke University, and his Bachelor of Science in physics from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Dorn Cox
Research Director at Wolfe’s Neck Center, Lead Collaborator on OpenTEAM, and a farmer working his 250-acre certified organic family farm in New Hampshire. Dorn is passionate about sharing open-source agricultural tools, software, and data to accelerate innovation and quantify environmental services from regenerative agriculture.
Dana Faulk Query
Co-owner of Big Red F Restaurant Group, a collective of 17 independently owned and operated restaurants in Colorado, with one in Kansas City. Dana serves on the board of the National Restaurant Association, Colorado Restaurant Association, EatDenver, Downtown Boulder Partnership, Nigh and Arryved.
Lisa Holmes
President of the Martha and Hunter Grubb Foundation. Lisa is a founding board member of GreenWave, and also currently serves on the boards of Rachel’s Network. She was also an associate producer of Food Chains, the James Beard Foundation Award-winning documentary.
Julie Hudson, Treasurer
Previously, Julie served as Director of Development at the Plastic Pollution Coalition, Vice President of Development at Mighty Earth/Waxman Strategies, and was 350.org’s Director of Development. Her fundraising experience also includes the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and Center for Food Safety.
Roberto Meza
Robert co-founded Emerald Gardens, which uses solar greenhouse design to grow microgreens for the Denver/Boulder area. He also co-founded the East Denver Food Hub, which works to meet the needs of rural farmers while expanding access to fresh produce. Roberto is a chairman for his local chapter of the National Young Farmers Coalition and the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union. He is also a member of the Denver Sustainable Food Policy Council and a board member of the High Plains Food Co-op.
Johanna Partin
Principal at Transformative Strategies Consulting. Previously, Johanna was the Founding Director of the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance, the former North American Regional Director of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, and Senior Environmental Policy Advisor to former San Francisco Mayors Gavin Newsom and Edward Lee.
John Wick
Co-founder of the Marin Carbon Project and the Carbon Cycle Institute (CCI) and is a founding Board member of Project Drawdown. John helped to fund the development of COMET-Planner and has contributed research to NRCS Conservation Practice Standards and advocated for CDFA’s Healthy Soils Initiative and related laws. He is the co-owner of Nicasio Native Grass Ranch with his wife, Peggy Rathmann.
Emily Wimberger, Secretary
Emily brings nearly 20 years of experience in climate policy and economic modeling to Hua Nani Partners. As Managing Partner, Emily works broadly across climate and environmental policy advocacy with a focus on the economic analysis and implementation of subnational policies. Prior to joining Hua Nani Partners, Emily served as Climate Economist at Rhodium Group where she analyzed the economic impact of climate change and policy responses, with an emphasis on state and transportation policies. Emily also provided state outreach support to the Climate Impact Lab, focusing on climate damages and the Social Cost of Carbon. Prior to Rhodium, Emily served as the Chief Economist for the California Air Resources Board where she assessed the economic impact of California’s portfolio of climate and air quality policies and programs with a focus on carbon markets and transportation.
The whole story
A closer look at how Zero Foodprint came to be.
In October of 2008 Anthony Myint and Kara Leibowitz rented a small snack truck to serve something called a "PB & J"(Crispy Pork Belly & marinated Jicama on a buttery scallion pancake-ish flatbread). This quirky experiment would end up with a line that looped around the block, and required pulling sous chefs from the crowd and running back the house to bake batch after batch of cookies to satiate the crowd. Little did they know that they were inadvertently building the pop-up movement!
As they were settling into a permanent pop-up called Mission Chinese, they also welcomed a child. Along with their daughter came the anxieties that often accompany new parenthood — they worried about the food they were feeding her and the kind of world they'd leave behind. Again, they dove headfirst into new territory, learned about food politics, pioneered a methodology to assess the carbon footprint of a restaurant, and discovered the immense potential of regenerative agriculture.
As they began to understand the power of these world-saving ingredients, they did what all good food folks would do, they started a restaurant! They dedicated their lives to sourcing from regenerative producers and telling the most hopeful story in climate change. Yet even though The Perennial was named the most sustainable restaurant in America, they very quickly learned that we weren’t going to be able to source our way out of this problem.
Buying the good stuff was doing a lot of good, but it wasn’t getting the next regenerative practice onto the next acre. This time they decided to see what would happen if they tried to start a movement, a movement to directly invest in changing how food was grown to restore our climate.