Faculty members from the list below will serve as the key presenters for one or both of the professional development institutes. In addition, the institutes will feature roundtables of innovators in school food service — an opportunity to hear and share the inspiration, knowledge, practices, and skills of some of the most forward-thinking and successful leaders in reinventing school food service.

Zenobia Barlow, M.A. is a co-founder and executive director of the Center for Ecoliteracy and its Rethinking School Lunch programs. She was co-principal investigator of The Food Systems Project, named one of the top ten USDA-funded Community Food Security programs. Previously she was executive director of the Elmwood Institute, an ecological think tank, executive editor of an international publishing company, and an academic administrator at Sonoma State University. She co-edited Ecoliteracy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World and is an accomplished documentary photographer.

Marilyn Briggs, R.D., M.S., S.N.S., is codirector of the new Center for Integrative Nutrition Environments in School Communities at UC Davis. Previously, she coordinated the development of the California Department of Education’s Shaping Healthy Choices program (which provided the framework for United States Department of Agriculture’s School Meals Initiative), and served as special assistant to the Undersecretary for Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services. Recently, she was appointed to CDE’s Health Education Standards Advisory Panel, which will develop the first mandated health standards for students in California. (Berkeley institute only)

Angela Calabrese Barton, Ph.D. is an associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on issues of equity and social justice in science education, with a particular emphasis on the urban context. She conducts ethnographic and case study research in urban community- and school-based settings that targets the science teaching-learning experiences of students, teachers, and parents. She is the co-principal investigator for the Linking Food and the Environment Curriculum Series.

Isobel Contento, Ph.D., C.D.N. is the Mary Schwarz Rose Professor of Nutrition Education at Teachers College Columbia University and is a leader in the fields of nutrition education, behavioral nutrition research, and food choice studies. She has written extensively on the effectiveness of nutrition education and authored the first textbook in nutrition education, published in 2007 entittled Nutrition Education: Linking Research, Theory, and Practice. Dr. Contento also specializes in curriculum development and evaluation and is the principal investigator for the Linking Food and the Environment Curriculum Series.

Pamela Koch, Ed.D., R.D. is the executive director of the Center for Food & Environment (LiFE) at Teachers College Columbia University. She has been the primary author of the Linking Food and the Environment Curriculum Series. Dr. Koch has provided professional development for LiFE for hundreds of teachers. She is also an adjunct assistant professor in the Nutrition Program at Teachers College Columbia University.

Toni Liquori, Ed.D. is an adjunct associate professor of nutrition at Teachers College Columbia University. Dr. Liquori spent the first part of her professional career doing what she called "guerilla work" in school meal reform--school by school, pilot by pilot. With funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Dr. Liquori now works with school administrators at the highest level, developing clear, realistic, plans to increase healthy, local foods in school meals. Her current project, through Liquori and Associates, is an alliance for “big cities" – serving over 40,000 meals a day – to work collaboratively on school food reform. (New York institute only)

Carolie Sly, Ph.D. is the education program specialist at the Center for Ecoliteracy. She holds a Ph.D. in science education from U.C. Berkeley. She has authored and coauthored several publications, including The California State Environmental Education Guide. Dr. Sly has taught elementary school, operated a private high school and teen café, and served on the faculty at San Francisco State University.