The Brighter Planet Blog

Judges

The judging process:

In each of the five contest categories, the experiences garnering the most “likes” will rated by the judges against these criteria.  Dozens of winners will take home prizes!

• How effective the tip experience is at reducing climate impact
• How the experience will add to the joy of cooking and sharing delicious meals
• How well the experience is described in the written word, photos and videos
• How easy the tip experience is for others to replicate

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On the judging panel:

Alice Waters
Chef, author, Founder, Chez Panisse Foundation; Vice President, Slow Food International

Alice Waters, chef, author, and proprietor of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California, pioneered a culinary philosophy based on using only the freshest organic products, picked in season. Over the course of three decades, Chez Panisse has developed a network of local farmers and ranchers whose dedication to sustainable agriculture assures the restaurant a steady supply of pure, fresh ingredients.

Waters’ commitment to education led to the creation of The Edible Schoolyard, a one-acre garden and adjacent kitchen classroom at Berkeley’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Middle School. The Edible Schoolyard is a model public education program, which actively involves students in all aspects of the food cycle, giving them the knowledge and values they need to build a humane and sustainable future. The program is nationally recognized for its efforts to integrate gardening, cooking and the sharing of a daily school lunch into the core academic curriculum. Alice founded the Chez Panisse Foundation in 1996 to support the Schoolyard and similar programs that use food traditions to teach, nurture, and empower young people. The success of The Edible Schoolyard led to the School Lunch Initiative, a landmark agreement between the Chez Panisse Foundation and The Berkeley Unified School District to integrate a nutritious daily lunch into the core classroom curriculum for all students, kindergarten through 12th grade.

Waters is Vice President of Slow Food International, a non-profit organization that promotes and celebrates local, artisanal food traditions with members in over 100 countries. Alice is the author of eight books, the latest of which, Chez Panisse Fruit, was published by HarperCollins in 2002.

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Amy Trubek
Chef, local food pioneer, Vermont Fresh Network

Amy teaches courses in the contemporary food system, food and culture, food history and qualitative research methods as assistant professor in the Nutrition and Food Science department at the University of Vermont. Her research interests include the history of the culinary profession, the globalization of the food supply, local foods, the relationship between taste and place, and domestic cooking in the contemporary United States.

She is the author of the recently published book, The Taste of Place, A Cultural Journey Into Terroir (2008) and Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession (2000). She is currently involved in an in-depth ethnographic project on cooking skill and cooking knowledge and the relationship to individual health. Prior to 2005, Amy was the executive director of the Vermont Fresh Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting direct partnerships between farmers and chefs. Amy was a 2002-2004 Food and Society Policy Fellow, and before that she taught at New England Culinary Institute for eight years.
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Ana Sofia Joanes
Director & Producer, FRESH

Following a travel-abroad program exploring the impact of globalization on the environment and culture, Ana came to the U.S. from Switzerland to earn a BA in political science from Barnard college. She graduated from Columbia Law School, where she was awarded as a Stone Scholar and Human Rights Fellow. Ana founded Reel Youth, Inc., a video production program for youth coming out of detention, and other under-served youth. Her first documentary, Generation Meds, explored our fears and misgivings about mental illness and medication. FRESH, Ana’s second documentary, celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system.

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Bill McKibben
Author and journalist, co-founder 350.org

Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, including the End of Nature and Deep Economy. Bill is also a frequent contributor to various magazines including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. He is also a board member and contributor to Grist Magazine. He has been awarded Guggenheim and Lyndhurst Fellowships, and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing in 2000. Bill has led the organizing of the world’s largest grassroots effort to fight climate change, 350.org. 350.org is named for the safe level of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere, 350 parts per million. This October 24, 350.org is organizing the 350 International Day of Climate Action, with thousands of events planned at iconic places around the world. He is currently a Scholar in Residence at Middlebury College and lives in Ripton, Vermont with his wife, author Sue Halpern, and daughter Sophie.

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Gary Hirshberg
Founder and CEO, Stonyfield Farms

Gary Hirshberg is the husband of freelance writer Meg Hirshberg and the father of three yogurt eaters. He is Chairman, President, and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt producer and the author of Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World (Hyperion Books, 2008). Gary is a frequent speaker on topics including sustainability, climate change, the profitability of green and socially responsible business, organic agriculture, and sustainable economic development.

Since 1983, Gary has overseen Stonyfield’s phenomenal growth, from its infancy as a seven-cow organic farming school to its current $330 million in annual sales. This year, Gary was named one of “America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs” by Business Week magazine, Stonyfield was chosen “Business of the Year – Manufacturing” by Business NH magazine and Stonyfield won an EPA Clean Air Excellence award. Gary also is featured in 2009′s most successful documentary, “Food, Inc.” He is the head coach of a Girls U17 travel soccer team and the Assistant Coach of the Concord (NH) High School girls varsity tennis team, both of which keep him humble and certain that he still has much to learn.

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Lisa Gosselin
Editorial Director, Eating Well Magazine

Lisa Gosselin is the editorial director of EatingWell Media Group, whose motto is “Where Good Taste Meets Good Health. As editorial director, she oversees the award-winning EatingWell Magazine, EatingWell books, EatingWell.com and custom publishing. She has also been the editor-in-chief of Audubon, Bicycling and Islands Magazines and has written for numerous publications, including Parade, Newsweek and Men’s Journal. Lisa currently lives in a small cabin in the woods of northern Vermont and is passionate about nature and the environment.

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Patti Prairie
CEO, Brighter Planet

Since the fall of 2006, Patti has led the development of Brighter Planet, an innovative Vermont company with a socially responsible mission: to help people manage their environmental footprint. With practical, carbon emission-reducing solutions, Brighter Planet is pioneering a new environmentalism — one that is accessible to everyone, fits one’s lifestyle, and is fun to share. To date, more than 100,000 people have used the company’s climate change solutions. Before adding “Treehugger” to her resume, Patti held Senior Executive positions at IBM, American Express, and Bank Boston where she successfully started and transformed dozens of ventures over the past three decades.

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Zachary Cohen
Food television writer & producer, Farm to Table

Zachary Adam Cohen is the creator of Farm to Table: The Emerging American Meal, a reality-TV show program that seeks to chronicle the people, places and trends emerging in America’s local foods renaissance. The Farm to Table blog has quickly become a must-read for those involved in the local sustainable food movement, with interviews of farmers, artisans and chefs, essays on the culture of sustainability and local foods, and guest blogs by farmers, chefs and advocates.

Zachary has also been regularly featured on Huffington Post’s Green Page, DIR Journal and is now a columnist for Green Lifestyle Magazine. Farm to Table was also listed as a Top 10 Thoughtful Food blog by Chef 2 Video, a British-based network, and was recently nominated for “Best Sustainable Blog” in Food Buzz’s annual blog contest. He was recently interviewed by Canada’s Digital Journal and is soon to be a food columnist for NewMajority.com where he will be writing about the politics of food under the “Enlightened Eater” column.

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