The Food Systems Leadership Network is supported by a small but mighty Network Backbone Team that serves as the network’s core staff, stewarding its overall health, impact, and forward momentum. Working in close partnership with the Network Leadership Council, network members, and partners, the Network Backbone Team provides the connective tissue that enables the network to thrive.
As the primary staff of the FSLN, this team focuses on cultivating relationships, coordinating shared work, and holding the infrastructure that supports collaboration across the FSLN community and the broader movement for food systems transformation that we are a part of. From designing and facilitating network programs and services, to supporting communications, outreach, partnerships, and resource development, the Network Backbone Team helps translate the network’s collective vision into action while ensuring that leadership and direction continue to be shaped by the community itself.
As part of Multiplier, the Network Backbone Team’s capacity is boosted by an amazing team of advisors and partners who support the operational and administrative functions that sustain the FSLN over time. Together, they serve as stewards, facilitators, and weavers, working behind the scenes and alongside members to strengthen connections, amplify impact, and support the conditions for long-term systems change.
Get to know the team!
Susan Lightfoot Schempf
Executive Director
Susan Lightfoot Schempf has dedicated her life’s work to building relationships of solidarity across communities, nourishing systems leadership, facilitating collaboration, and realizing food sovereignty. She first dug her hands in the earth as a child at Our Father’s Garden – a faith-based community farm in her hometown of Baton Rouge, Louisiana – and has been growing community through food ever since.
Susan brings 20+ years of practical experience in non-profit leadership and equitable food systems development to her role as Executive Director of the FSLN. In 2005, she co-founded the Noyo Food Forest – a community-based organization that built a unique on-site farm to school program at Fort Bragg High School in rural northern California that is still in operation today – one of her proudest achievements. Her journey in food systems grew from there – gathering experience in farmers markets, food hubs, school nutrition, food safety, and food policy councils – and eventually led her back to Louisiana for grad school. After almost 10 years in a leadership role at the Wallace Center, where she and her team launched the FSLN, Susan shepherded the metamorphosis of the network and its transition to independence in 2025.
Susan’s work at FSLN focuses on advancing equitable, resilient, and sustainable food systems by supporting leaders and organizations through shared learning, strategy, and network-building. She is deeply committed to cultivating systems leadership that can navigate complexity, dismantle racism and inequity, and drive meaningful, long-term change in food systems. Outside of work, Susan eagerly seeks out music, food, family, and friends (preferably together), and is almost always plotting her next tropical adventure. She’s also developed quite the green thumb, keeping a backyard garden that keeps her humble and reminds her of both the beauty and the challenge of growing healthy food for community.
Chelsea Jackson
Network Outreach & Engagement Lead
Chelsea Jackson has deep roots in South Louisiana, shaped by a life that bridged both urban and rural communities and fostered an early connection to nature. Her path into the food system was anything but linear. After beginning as a Toxicology major with plans for the medical field, she returned home to pursue Agricultural Science and later earned a master’s degree in Biology. Chelsea launched her career at the Southern University Agricultural Research and Extension center, managing a Food Composition Laboratory while teaching food/produce safety and Good Agricultural Practices across the state.
Through this work, she discovered a passion for supporting food system stakeholders and recognized the structural barriers they face. She later led the development of Greaux the Good, Louisiana’s statewide nutrition incentive program, driving impact through outreach, partnerships, and advocacy. Her work centers on cultivating change through communication, connection, and collaboration. Chelsea brings these experiences and her passion to her role within the FSLN, where she is committed to strengthening the network and deepening meaningful connections among members and partners across the food system.
Alyssa Thayer
Network Programs & Partnerships Lead
Growing up on a farm in central Pennsylvania, Alyssa developed an early appreciation for land stewardship and the transformative power of food to nourish connection to ourselves, each other, and the planet.
Her journey has woven through public health, youth leadership, food marketing, and regional food systems work, with a central thread of meeting people where they are and creating inclusive and welcoming spaces. She began her career in school-based health initiatives, where she saw the limits of top-down approaches and helped spark a youth-led campaign centered on young people leading healthy change in their schools and communities.
Most recently at The Food Trust in Philadelphia, she led regional food systems strategy and supported a network of farmers markets and farmstands, working across sectors to align partners and strengthen programs. Her work is grounded in the belief that how we build matters just as much as what we build, and that lasting progress can’t come at the expense of the people doing the work.
She joins the Food Systems Leadership Network as Programs and Partnerships Lead and looks forward to contributing to and learning from a network of leaders working toward more just and resilient food systems.