Meet the Food for Thought Team

Ev is a creative community builder and facilitator, dedicated to supporting the transformation of the West Australian food system. Ev founded Community Food Events in 2014, a social enterprise focused on placing food systems issues front and centre of community conversations in WA, and is the West Australian event director for Sustain: The Australian Food Network. Since 2014 she has co designed and successfully delivered over 30 agri-food events in WA. The Food for Thought Festival is the flagship West Australian event taking place annually in Albany. Evelyn recognises the imperative need to translate world leading research and best practise models into realised local community action. She is a connector of passionate, progressive people and organisations. Identifying community assets and mobilising stakeholders around a shared vision is her strength. Originally from the Port City of Fremantle, Evelyn resides on 6 acres in Bridgetown with her four children, lover French Kev and dog Tina.

Justin is founder of of the Regenerative Farmers Network, WA (RegenWA) and has over 20 years experience and an unparalleled network of practitioners in the sector. With an extensive farming background in a multi-generational farming family, Justin intimately understands the immense challenges and dysfunction inherent in our food system and climate impacts, and also the abundant opportunities for change. Regenerative Agriculture has the capacity to transform and dramatically improve land management practices, carbon drawdown and sustainable food production through restoring soil microbiome biodiversity. Benefits of regenerative farming are far reaching, from simply reducing chemical use and improving food nutrient density, through to restoring farming communities, restoring the natural water cycle and significant carbon drawdown. Justin has drawn together national and international thought leaders and domain experts such as Dr Charles Massy and Dr Nick Rose to collaborative design and innovation events in WA, connected hundreds of diverse cross-sector stakeholders and worked with all levels of business and government to align to a common purpose – the regeneration and reconnection of our food system from farm to fork, from paddock to parliament.

Executive Director Sustain: The Australian Food Network. Nick has been the ED of Sustain since its establishment in January 2016. With a background in law and community development, Nick brings more than a decade of working at the grassroots and institutional level in several Australian states in food sovereignty and sustainable food systems. He is the editor of Fair Food: Stories from a Movement Changing the World (2015) and the co-editor of Reclaiming the Urban Commons: The past, present and future of food growing in Australian towns and cities (2018)

Ronnie - Co-founder of Meerkats, the Creative Business Solutions company. Ronnie’s working life started as a London-based advertising guy trying to persuade people to eat more Cadbury’s chocolate, drink more Bass Brewers beer, and choose Kraft General Food’s freeze-dried instant coffee granules as real coffee. That was in the late 1980s. In 2001 he evolved, moving to Western Australia he co-founded a new kind of Creative Business Solutions company called Meerkats. Meerkats’ approach is to start with the true purpose that drives every organisation they work with - the purpose that creates genuine value for people - to know what you’re serving rather than selling. Some of the local companies they’ve worked with are Brownes dairy - where the mums working there felt empowered to take their yoghurt brands back to nature, as well as launch a sugar-free flavoured milk for kids; Harvey Beef - where the old-school butchers still train their boners today; and Southern Forests – where a collaborative brand has been established to encourage the region as a sustainable culinary tourism destination. Ronnie’s also worked with the Worldwide Fund for Nature (UK), developing a program of Sustainability Education for business schools. So accelerating climate action is a passion, and since the food & agricultural sector is the No.1 contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions, he has become focused on the transition from industrial farming to agro-ecology. He believes that this can only become mainstream though, if there is a broad shift in consumer sentiment towards fair food.

Kerry is a fourth generation new farmer from Mullalyup and Food for Thoughts manager of mischief & magic. She has a small herd that run on her dad’s property and is working on pasture and soil health improvement to grow luscious grass. Her visions for the future - of particular interest are high welfare processing facilities and their value adding opportunities. 'I would love to have a community processing facility to service small producers. My challenges are access to sufficient land, capital and how to spend more time doing farming better.'

Dieter Van den Broek is Design Strategist & Facilitator Commonland Foundation at Commonland in the Netherlands where he leads their ecosystem management, stakeholder platforms, landscape transformation, and leadership work. Dieter is passionate about facilitating social change processes to build multi sectorial/stakeholder platforms and partnerships to create collective action to restore resilient landscapes. Dieter brings strong experience and knowledge of the Theory U, ecosystem management and trans-disciplinary knowledge production into the process, to create strong bottom based and top guided innovations. Dieter’s focus is to create transformation and innovations that are owned by local stakeholders and supported by solid science. Dieter is also training himself to become a transformational coach to enable him to coach and build leadership capacity within landscape management, organisations, governments and businesses. Dieter is co-founder of the South African NGO called Living Lands.

In his early 20’s Leon helped build Big Help Mob (bighelpmob.org), an online 'mob' of ordinary people who combine their powers to perform extraordinary voluntary feats for good. One day Big Help Mob volunteers could be helping make 180 meals to feed the homeless. Then the next day, they could be planting thousands of trees in a single morning. As a founding member of Useful, Leon learnt by doing everything from managing volunteers, board governance, startup funding and many other useful skills.  After the defunding of Big Help Mob in 2015, Leon moved to the Great Southern Region in 2016 to set up and operate a vineyard and winery. At first “just to take a break”, but fell in love with the region and now calls Albany home. Leon has in the past worked in the finance, community development, technology, brand development and blockchain sectors but is most proud of his first-class honours in smiling. Leon has worked on many projects and ideas throughout his career all largely based applying new ways of using technology for community impact.   He is currently studying for his Master of Business Administration (Social Impact) with the University of New South Wales. Leon currently coordinates FathomCo, is a non-executive director of the Albany Community Bendigo Bank and Great Southern Centre for Recreational Excellence and a director for Wilson Inlet Catchment Committee. He always makes time for making his own wine, meditating and saving small cats from trees.

Zoe is creative facilitator, community artist and visual scribe. She is an integrator with a fascination for the space in-between. The space where cultures, ideas, disciplines, minds and hearts can meet to think differently and instigate long lasting, systemic change. She is passionate about driving change through the power of stories and collaborating with others so we can all help shape the society that we wish to live in. Zoe has spent the last year at the Youth Initiative Program, a societal entrepreneurship training in Sweden, Scotland and Brazil with a focus on sustainable community development and social arts. She has worked as a scribe, facilitator, producer and performer with a heart for art that connects with community and makes a difference. Most recently she has worked on the Danjoo Koorliny Walking Together Towards 2029 and Beyond: Voice, Treaty, Truth Summit at Social Impact Festival 2019.

Maurine (affectionately known as MoMo by the team) has a Communication and Social Networks Bachelor degree (France). Momo left her home town in Northern France late in 2019 to live the Australian Adventure and has been discovering how to drive change through getting involved in social impact projects here in Australia. She wants to empower communities through network building - assisting them to establish a sustainable Australian food system to help preserve our earth for the future generations.

Rach is studying a Bachelor of Health Promotion at Edith Cowan University. She's a big believer that our society needs to shift our attention and resources towards preventative health. Her passion is providing opportunities to people and communities that allow them to improve their overall health and well-being. Rach is an active member of the Edith Cowan University Enactus team. ECU Enactus aims to find areas within our community that need attention. They then work with the community and relevant stakeholders to create sustainable programs to address these needs. She is currently the project manager for our BeSafe program. This program teaches international students how to enjoy Australian beaches in a safe and fun way.