Staff Bios

Josh Viertel, President
Josh Viertel is working to make a good, clean, and fair food system.  He previously worked as a shepherd, a teacher, a vegetable farmer, an activist, a fisherman, and a baker.  Before coming to Slow Food, he co-founded and co-directed the Yale Sustainable Food Project which brought local and sustainable food into Yale’s dining halls, created a farm on campus, and built programs in and out of the classroom on sustainability, food and agriculture.  His work has been written about in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic Monthly and numerous other publications, and he has presented at, or worked on projects with the American Academy in Rome, The Guggenheim, The Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, and the 2008 Venice Biennale.  Josh lives in Brooklyn in an ex-chair factory, with his partner, Juliana Sabinson, who is an artist.

Jenny Best, Special Assistant to the President
Jenny joined Slow Food USA in 2010. Jenny’s passion for sustainable food and agriculture began one day when she realized she had eaten the same pre-packaged lunch at work for four years.  Jenny now spends her Saturdays buying real food from real farmers and her Sundays cooking from scratch.  Jenny was previously Chief of Staff at the NYC Department of Buildings, a member of Mayor Bloomberg’s City Hall staff, and a dancer with the New York City Ballet.  Jenny graduated from NYU with a degree in politics.  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Michael.

Deena Goldman, Program Manager, Leadership
Deena holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Tulane University.  She began her career working as an editor at an educational publishing house before her interest in food sustainability brought her to Slow Food in 2005.  Deena’s work has included planning national and international conferences, coordinating organizational communication, and overseeing the national membership program for three years.  Her current primary focus is developing a new program that includes training and professional development for Slow Food’s national network of leaders.  She credits her interest in food from a childhood spent in the kitchen that led to an adulthood spent eating, cooking, baking and making chocolate in amazing places including Italy, New Orleans, and now New York. She and her husband can usually be found at the farmers market in their Manhattan neighborhood. 

Gordon Jenkins, Advocacy Program Manager
Gordon joined Slow Food USA in 2009 to help organize the Time for Lunch campaign. He grew up in Berkeley, CA, eating happy meals and boneless skinless chicken breasts. In college, he worked as a student farmer at the Yale Farm, where he began to see food activism as a very local, personal solution to the world’s many crises. He has worked in Alice Waters’ Office at Chez Panisse and as Content Coordinator for Slow Food Nation, the big event that took place over Labor Day 2008 in San Francisco. He also manages http://eat-ins.org.

Sheila Karaszewski, Membership Coordinator
Sheila holds a Bachelors of Science in Marketing with a minor in international business. Prior to working for Slow Food USA, she had been immersed in the world of restaurants, where she spent her time cultivating her wine knowledge and pestering the chefs for cooking advice. An avid reader, taster, and lover of all things food related, her driving goal is to bring the opportunity to enjoy fresh, delicious food into everyone’s lives. She recently learned how to make the best pierogies ever, courtesy of her grandma’s recipe and her mom’s adaptation.

Patrick Keeler, Development Coordinator
Patrick came to the sustainable food movement through a rather circuitous route after majoring in French and European Studies. While it’s true that as a child he enjoyed baking holiday cookies with his mother and pastries in French class, his organic epiphany didn’t strike him until his first semester in the Environmental Policy Masters program at Clark University. Patrick has worked throughout upstate New York on organic farm CSAs in Poughkeepsie and the Finger Lakes region, and in Rochester as the urban School Garden and Farm Manager for a non-profit. In 2007 he helped launch Rochester’s South Wedge Farmers’ Market. Although his mother no longer bakes, Patrick carries on the cookie tradition with valor. He dreams of retiring on the coast of Greece where he’ll dine solely on feta, tomatoes, olives and wine for the rest of his days. 

Jerusha Klemperer, Program Manager, Networks and Partnerships
Jerusha holds an undergraduate degree in Religion and Women’s Studies from Swarthmore College and an MFA in Acting from Columbia University. She spent five years at Population Council, an international non-profit that performs reproductive health research and implementation around the globe. Also a writer of all kinds of things including book reviews, plays and blog posts, she is the editor of the Slow Food USA blog and a contributor to the Huffington Post, Civil Eats and her personal blog eathere2 (http://www.eathere2.blogspot.com). Here at Slow Food USA she coordinated the US delegation to Terra Madre 2008 and before that served as the Assistant to the Executive Director. In her free time she cooks up food and fun with Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant (http://www.avantgarderestaurant.com) and she credits Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation with first opening her eyes way back when to some of the dark underbelly of our nation’s food system.

Kate Krauss, Director of Development
Kate Krauss joined Slow Food USA in 2009 after working in major gift fundraising at The Nature Conservancy, with primary responsibility for the organization’s China program and climate change initiative. Kate began her career in television journalism, working in production for the ABC News programs World News Tonight and Nightline. A native of southern Ohio, Kate has loved having the opportunity to live on the east coast and in California, but she still has a soft spot for Midwestern summer thunderstorms and fresh-picked sweet corn.

Nathan Leamy, Acting Director of Operations
Nathan came to Slow Food USA via his work at Slow Food Nation in San Francisco. Nathan’s agricultural education truly began when he attended Deep Springs College where he studied politics and managed 152 acres of organically grown alfalfa. After Deep Springs, he attended Oberlin College.  There he spent time working with the student cooperative association, eventually developing a housing and dining cooperative which focused on educating students to eat well. Nathan has spent time working for the government and various non-profits.  Post college, Nathan completed a Watson Fellowship studying how global changes in agricultural and economic policy have altered the consumption of traditional breads in Mexico, India, France, Italy, and Egypt.

Erika Lesser, Director of Operations & Special Projects
Erika has worked for Slow Food USA since its founding in 2000, and also spent a year working at Slow Food’s international headquarters in Italy for the University of Gastronomic Sciences, before returning to New York in 2004 to take on her current position. A native of Boston, Erika graduated from Brown University with a BA in Italian Studies and Art History, and worked in the food and nonprofit sectors while earning a MA in Food Studies from New York University. Erika also serves on the boards of Community Food Security Coalition and Slow Food International.

Julia Middleton, Acting Youth Programs Manager
Chicago born and bred, Julia credits her parents for her initial interest in food, her father ground up the eclectic family meals into bite sized pieces to nurture her young palate, while her mother was responsible for the foreign food adventures. After establishing that indiscriminate palate, Julia headed off to Southern California to soak up the sun and study environmental sustainability, with a particular focus on agriculture. She has also spent time in Australia eating from community gardens, frequenting farmers markets and honing her interest in, and passion for, the youth food movement.

Brian Sinderson, Director of Marketing & Communications
With more than 20 years of marketing and public relations agency experience, Brian manages the branding, marketing and communications efforts for Slow Food USA. He is a self-proclaimed foodie and a restaurant junkie, who seeks out chefs preparing meals with locally-grown, sustainable ingredients. He previously owned his own consultancy focused on corporate social responsibility and sustainability where he educated corporations on the need to tread lightly on the planet.  When he isn’t writing, blogging or twittering about food, sustainability or the environment, you can usually find him behind the lens of his camera.

Emily Stephenson, Operations Assistant
Emily joined Slow Food USA in the 2009 as an intern. She grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and developed a love of cooking and a habit of reading cookbooks like novels. Her interest moved from cooking to sustainability and food politics as she delved deeper into the issue. She graduated with a degree in international relations from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. Emily is thrilled to be able to combine love of cooking and learning about food with her interest in the bigger picture of the food system.