Community Food Systems Mentor Profile: Miles Gordon
The Community Food Systems Mentorship Program offers Network members the opportunity to work directly with a food systems expert to support their growth, learn best practices, and connect with seasoned food movement leaders.
Miles Gordon
Principal, Kitchen Table Consulting
About Miles:
Miles Gordon is Principal of Kitchen Table Consulting (KTC), focusing on designing and facilitating spaces for community empowerment, systems development, and organizational leadership. Prior to his work at (KTC) Miles served as the Food Systems Director for North Coast Opportunities (NCO), located in Mendocino and Lake Counties, California. After several years of growing organic melons in Potter Valley, CA and studying International Relations, Miles served as a bilingual high school and college teacher, teacher trainer, and human rights worker in Central America. As a result of these experiences, Miles founded the Gardens Project of NCO (http://www.gardensproject.org/) to empower low-income, disenfranchised communities in California to grow food in community gardens through facilitated leadership development and self-management. The Gardens Project has developed over 60 gardens with more than 3500 individuals eating food from them. Miles facilitated the expansion of the project to develop and manage numerous Farm to School, Farmer’s Market, Farmer Development, Food Hub, and Nutrition programs. Miles has administered several USDA grants, including the Community Food Projects, Farm-to-School Program, Farmers Market Promotion Program, Specialty Crop Block Grants, SNAP-Ed, and FINI Market Match and continues to work with communities throughout the U.S. to shift power and leadership from non-profits to the communities which they serve. Miles has served as an FSLN mentor since the programs’ inception in 2018 and brings a wealth of experience supporting food systems leaders. He is a community facilitator for the EPA’s Local Food, Local Places initiative, a facilitator for California’s North Coast Regional Farm to Food Assistance (F2FA) and the National F2FA Community of Practices, is co-founder of the Mendocino Food Policy Council, and served as a member of the California Food Policy Council.
Areas of Expertise
Seeking to Mentor
I would like to work with individuals and communities whose primary mission is community empowerment, while using food systems as the vehicle to empower to them. Within the context of food systems, I would like to work with individuals and communities that may have an initial focus on one project/program, but wish to develop a comprehensive food systems approach through their own organization and/or multi-stakeholder development. Bilingue en Espanol.
Wow; what an incredible journey you have enjoyed; looking forward to learning and sharing learnings this year!