2020 Alaska Food Festival & Conference
Keynote Speakers & Special Guests

VALERIE SEGREST
NATIVE AMERICAN AGRICULTURE FUND
REGIONAL DIRECTOR, NATIVE FOOD & KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

Valerie Segrest, an enrolled member of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, serves as the Native American Agriculture Fund’s Regional Director for Native Food and Knowledge Systems. She has a Bachelor of Science in Human Nutrition and Health Sciences from Bastyr University and a Master of Arts in Environment and Community. Ms. Segrest has dedicated her work in the field of Native American Nutrition towards the efforts of the food sovereignty movement rooted in education, awareness and overcoming barriers to accessing traditional foods for tribal communities throughout North America. Ms. Segrest has co-authored several publications including the books “Feeding the People, Feeding the Spirit: Revitalizing Northwest Coastal Indian Food Culture” and “Feeding Seven Generations: A Salish Cookbook.”

DANIELLE NIERENBERG
FOOD TANK,
CO-FOUNDER & PRESIDENT

In 2013, Danielle Nierenberg co-founded Food Tank with Bernard Pollack, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. Food Tank is a global convener, research organization, and non-biased creator of original research impacting the food system. Danielle is the recipient of the 2020 Julia Child Award. She has an M.S. in Agriculture, Food, and Environment from the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and spent two years volunteering for the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic.

ELISE KROHN
WILD FOODS & MEDICINES
HERBALIST, NATIVE FOODS SPECIALIST, EDUCATOR, AND AUTHOR
& Chenoa Egawa

Elise Krohn, M.Ed. is an educator, author, herbalist, and native foods specialist. She is the Wild Foods and Medicines Program Director at GRuB (Garden Raised Bounty) in Olympia, WA. During her 20 years of experience teaching in tribal communities, she has worked with elders and cultural specialists to create community gardens, food sovereignty resources, and curricula on chronic disease prevention. She worked at Northwest Indian Treatment Center and Northwest Indian College for 10 years. She also has experience as a clinical herbalist, and has authored three books and several educational resources. 

Chenoa Egawa is Coast Salish of the Lummi and S’Klallam Nations of Washington State. She is a ceremonial leader, singer, speaker, environmental activist and artist dedicated to bringing healing to our Mother Earth, and to people of all cultures, backgrounds and origins through recognition of our shared experiences as human beings. Chenoa has long been active in local and international work for Indigenous peoples, children, and the environment.  

SOMMER SIBILLY-BROWN
VIRGIN ISLANDS GOOD FOOD COALITION,
FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Sommer Angelique Sibilly-Brown is an advocate for food equity and justice, whose passion led her to founding a small place-based organization that works toward Security, Sovereignty and Sustainability for all. As the founder and executive director of the Virgin Islands Good Food Coalition, Inc.

She sees her work as advancing the common good, using food as the vehicle.  Her organization seeks to raise awareness of the importance and impact of a healthy local food system in the territory and to explore and highlight the inescapable sameness that people who live in non-contiguous parts of the United States experiences, as well as the untold beauty and uniqueness of those systems and their culinary cultural traditions. She has worked with farmers, chefs, teachers, and local and State Agencies, multiple national Universities and testified at congress. She is also the creator of Food Learn, a program that exposes youth in the US Virgin Islands to food system conversations, and encourages soft skill development, like networking and public speaking. Sommer was born on the island of St. Thomas to Angela & David Sibilly. She is married to Stephen Vaughn Brown Jr. and is a stepmother to Ajani Brown. Her family’s unconditional love and support keeps her grounded and allows her to chase her dreams.

MARTHA PEARSON,
HEALTH PROMOTION DIRECTOR
&
KATE FOSSMAN,
RDN, LD, CDE & NUTRITION SPECIALIST
SOUTHEAST ALASKA REGIONAL HEALTH CONSORTIUM

Martha Pearson, MA, MPA- As Director of SEARHC Health Promotion, Ms. Pearson oversees multiple health promotion programs for Native people and rural communities in southeast Alaska.  She has worked for over two decades as a health educator and program coordinator for programs in Alaska that address chronic disease prevention, policies, systems and environmental changes, alcohol and suicide prevention as well as Home Health.  Ms. Pearson has worked for Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium since 2002.

Kate Fossman, RD, LD, CDCES, is a community dietitian and diabetes educator with the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. Based out of Haines, she is involved in both the clinical and community sides of nutrition: being a part of a high-risk telehealth diabetes clinic for patients around the region and getting her hands dirty in the Klukwan community garden. She graduated from the Dietetics program at the University of Alaska Anchorage and spent time volunteering in the Alaska Native Medical Center kitchen. This education and work opened her eyes to the bounty of vitally nutritious food in the state, both gardened and harvested. Her in-laws gillnet for salmon in the Lynn Canal and she and her husband have developed a garden and mini-orchard on their land in Haines. 

BREN SMITH
GREENWAVE & THIMBLE ISLAND OCEAN FARM
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Bren Smith, GreenWave executive director and owner of Thimble Island Ocean Farm, pioneered the development of regenerative ocean farming. A lifelong commercial fisherman, he was named one of Rolling Stone magazine’s “25 People Shaping the Future” and featured in TIME magazine’s “Best Inventions of 2017”. Bren is the winner of the Buckminster Fuller Prize and has been profiled by 60 Minutes, CNN, The New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, and elsewhere. He is an Ashoka, Castanea, and Echoing Green Climate Fellow and James Beard Award-winning author of Eat Like a Fish: My Adventures Farming the Ocean to Fight Climate Change.

Anne Palmer
John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future
Program Director, Food Communities & Public Health

Anne Palmer, MAIA, is an Associate Scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior, and Society and a program director at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future. She directs the Food Policy Networks project, which seeks to improve the capacity of food policy councils and similar groups to advance food system policies at the state, local, regional and tribal level. Her research interests include the role of food retail in public health, how regional food supply chains can serve low- income areas, food system governance and equity, and the impact of federal food policy on communities. She co-teaches a course on applying systems thinking to obesity prevention. Prior working at CLF, she spent 13 years designing, developing and executing public health communication campaigns in Asia.