Join us!

Explore food and packaging waste, ultra-processed foods, and sustainable ingredients in school food

Join us for a special three-part webinar series, Healthy School Food for Thought, hosted by Chef Ann Foundation CEO Mara Fleishman, featuring special guests from the World Wildlife Fund, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Natural Resources Defense Council, Stanford Prevention Research Center, and more!

During each webinar, we will examine a major topic in today’s school food landscape — decreasing food waste, reducing ultra-processed foods, and buying more sustainable ingredients — to understand challenges and opportunities. 

Learn more about each webinar and register below! All webinars are free to attend.

April 23 • 2-3 p.m. ET 

Feeding Minds, Not Landfills: Why Reducing School Food & Packaging Waste Matters

Featuring Alex Nichols-Vinueza, director of food and loss waste at World Wildlife Fund, Stephanie Lip, senior director of West Coast operations at Chef Ann Foundation, Dr. Kaitlyn Harper, assistant scientist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and Yvette Cabrera, food waste director at Natural Resources Defense Council 

This webinar will focus on the root causes of food and packaging waste in schools, how to address those causes, and what change can look like.

September 17 • 1-2 p.m. ET 

Reducing Ultra-Processed Meals: The Next Chapter in School Food

Featuring Chef Ann Cooper, president and founder of Chef Ann Foundation, MJ Kepner, senior director of policy at Chef Ann Foundation, and Dr. Christopher Gardner, Rehnborg Farquhar professor of medicine at Stanford University & director of Stanford Nutrition Studies Research Group at the Stanford Prevention Research Center 

This webinar will focus on the overdependence of ultra-processed foods in school meals. We’ll examine the challenges they present and the opportunities to reduce their presence on trays.

November 19 • 1-2 p.m. ET

School Meals for a Sustainable Future: Local, Organic, & Regenerative

Panelists: coming soon!

There is a lot of conflicting information about whether school food programs can truly procure higher-quality ingredients. This webinar will explore the realities of districts’ ability to incorporate more local, regenerative, and organic food into their programs.

Mara Fleishman

CEO, Chef Ann Foundation

Mara Fleishman’s career in food systems advocacy started in her early 20s when she looked to the power of food after being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Mara has over 20 years of experience in leading systems change initiatives in the for-profit and non-profit sectors, including over a decade at Whole Foods Market where she served as Global Director of Partnerships.

In Mara’s role as CEO of the Chef Ann Foundation, she has spent the last 10 years fighting for healthier food for our nation’s kids. Mara’s niche is system-based change and although she takes on many roles as a leader, her favorite is programmatic engineering — breaking down problems to their foundation and building programmatic solutions through dynamic and integrated approaches. This type of programmatic engineering can be seen through the work of the Chef Ann Foundation, an organization recognized as the national leader in driving fresh, healthy, and delicious scratch-cooked food in schools.

Alex Nichols-Vinueza

Director of Food Waste at World Wildlife Fund

Alex supports the US Food Waste team’s portfolio of projects, including work with the agricultural, grocery retail, hospitality, and food service sectors. This includes the Global Farm Loss Tool, the Food Waste Warrior program (which empowers students and teachers to learn about the food system by measuring and reducing their school food waste); the Zero Food Waste Coalition (in its work to advance common-sense policies at the state and federal levels to develop a more circular food economy and mitigate climate change); and the US Food Waste Pact (a national voluntary agreement to accelerate leading food businesses’ progress toward their waste reduction targets).

Alex brings over 15 years of project and partnership management experience across tech, government, and sustainability consulting in the US and Latin America. He is bilingual in Spanish and English and holds a BA from the University of Michigan and a MEM from Duke’s Nichols School of the Environment.

Kaitlyn Harper

Assistant Scientist in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health

Dr. Kaitlyn Harper (she/her), PhD, MS, MA, focuses her research on improving food security and reducing wasted food in the U.S. As a former high school teacher working in Title I districts, Kaitlyn is passionate about community-centered, school-based work. She has conducted numerous studies in schools, including a two-year evaluation of food waste interventions in districts across four states, an evaluation of the effect of USDA waiver rescission on the Summer Food Service Program, a mixed-methods analysis of the School Food Pantry Program in over 200 Maryland schools.

Stephanie Lip

Senior Director of West Coast Operations, Chef Ann Foundation

Stephanie leads a team dedicated to providing high-quality support and technical assistance to school districts, ensuring alignment with the goals of systems change. She works to build capacity in scratch cooking and expand the workforce in school food programs - hoping to be an example for other culinary professionals to find their place in school food. 

After graduating from Johnson & Wales University with a degree in Culinary Arts & Nutrition, Stephanie moved from her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, to Arizona to serve as an inaugural service member with FoodCorps in 2011. Her year of service opened her eyes to the possibilities of using her training and experience in culinary nutrition to connect kids with healthy and delicious food in schools. Since then, Stephanie has worked with several school districts in various roles, including Culinary Specialist and Supervisor with Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, Chef with Brigaid and New London Public Schools, and School Nutrition Director with Pacific Grove Unified School District. Stephanie also holds a Master’s in Sustainable Food Systems from Arizona State University.

Yvette Cabrera

Food Waste Director, Natural Resources Defense Council

Yvette Cabrera has worked in food systems for over a decade. At Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), she oversees engagement on federal, state, and local food waste policy, and cutting-edge research on food waste. 

Before joining NRDC, Yvette worked at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she managed the implementation of the food loss and waste initiative in the U.S. 

She is based in New York City.

Chef Ann Cooper

Founder, Chef Ann Foundation

In 2009, Chef Ann Cooper founded the Chef Ann Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping schools take action so that every child has daily access to fresh, healthy, and delicious food.

Also known as the “Renegade Lunch Lady,“ Chef Ann served for 11 years as the Director of Food Services for Boulder Valley School District in Boulder, Colorado. Currently, Ann is Partner of Lunch Lessons, LLC, a consultancy for school districts going through large-scale food change. Ann attends many national conferences and performs regular speaking engagements. 

A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Ann has over 45 years of experience as a cook and chef, including 20 years in school food programs. Her books Bitter Harvest and Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children have made her a leading advocate for safe, sustainable food.

MJ Kepner

Senior Director of Policy, Chef Ann Foundation

In this role, MJ advocates for state and federal policy pathways to increase healthy, scratch-cooked meals in schools and the skilled workforce needed to do so. 

Prior to joining the Chef Ann Foundation, he managed federal and state policy work for two leading Massachusetts anti-hunger organizations, Project Bread, and The Greater Boston Food Bank. MJ received his Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from American University and worked for several different political campaigns and organizations before moving into healthy food access work. 

As someone who grew up utilizing SNAP and free school meals, MJ is passionate about ensuring that every child has access to healthy, scratch-cooked meals and hopes to eradicate the stigma and barriers associated with accessing healthy food.

Christopher Gardner

Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine, Stanford University 
Director, Stanford Nutrition Studies Research Group at the Stanford Prevention Research Center

For more than 30 years, Christopher Gardner, PhD, Rehnborg Farquhar Professor of Medicine at Stanford and nutrition scientist, has been a key faculty member at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, where he leads the Stanford Nutrition Studies Research Group. With a PhD in Nutrition Science from UC Berkeley, he has led over 20 human nutrition intervention studies, including trials of Mediterranean, Ketogenic, Vegan, Low-Fat, and Low-Carb diets and their effects on cardiometabolic outcomes such as blood lipids, glucose, and inflammation.

He is recognized as a leading expert, both nationally and internationally, on what to consume and avoid for optimal health and how to best motivate individuals to achieve healthy dietary behaviors. He recently completed a two-year term serving on the 2025 US Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and is the past chair of the American Heart Association’s Nutrition Committee.

Some of his current interests include stealth nutrition, unapologetic deliciousness, and institutional food settings. He is currently working on personalized nutrition explorations with several colleagues, with a particular focus on the gut microbiome. He is frequently consulted by major outlets like The New York Times, CNN, and MSNBC for his expertise. His work was recently featured in the Netflix Top 10 docuseries (January 2024) - You Are What You Eat: A Twin Experiment.