The Team
Project Director: Anna Lappé is a national bestselling author, educator, and a founding principal of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund. Named one of TIME magazine’s “Eco” Who’s Who, Anna’s most recent book is Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It. She is also the co-author of Hope’s Edge and Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen and a contributing author to nine other books. A graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Brown University, Anna’s research on sustainable agriculture has taken her from Brooklyn to South Korea, China, Bangladesh, India, Poland, France, Italy, Mali, Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, and beyond. A frequent public speaker, in the past decade Anna has participated in hundreds of public events, from community food festivals to university lectures to emceeing a food-focused fundraiser at Sotheby’s.
Project Manager: lida Shao does a bit of everything at Real Food Media Project. She attempts to know, connect, and support what’s happening — in the project: from fundraising to website development, writing to film-editing, research to social media/outreach. Having spent time learning and teaching languages in rural China and Guatemala, she enjoys responding to the national and international viewers of the project and their feedback to it. lida graduated magna cum laude from Brown University with a B.A. in Education and in Community Health. She’s an active community member and culture crafter — recently helping to start a successful Community Supported Kitchen in her neighborhood and a productive mini-farm in Queens, NY, while exploring filmmaking, tasty foods, Diaspora, urban cities, and rural landscapes worldwide.
Research + Online Engagement: Christina Bronsing supports the research behind the project along with content and website development and design elements for our online platforms. Originally from Minnesota, Christina loves the snow and comes from generations of family farmers and homesteaders. After earning her B.A. from Boston College, she was Chicago bound to dig into community work creating gardens in vacant lots with neighbors and organizing for community health. She joined the MythBusters team in NYC fresh off a trip to Bolivia learning from farmers about how climate change is impacting agricultural systems with Food First and is currently working on research around quinoa production. Christina completed her MPA in International Policy at NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service in May 2012 at the intersection of food sovereignty and environment.
Video Production and Website Design: Free Range Studios is one of the nation’s most successful cause-based online movie makers. Free Range was the creative force behind the record-breaking viral video, The Meatrix, which spoofs to The Matrix to reveal the reality of factory farming; Store Wars, which gives new meaning to the name Chewbaca; and Annie Leonard’s Story of Stuff, which will make you think twice about whether you really need to buy that latest tech gadget. We are excited to have Free Range’s creative vision and technical savvy for our project.
Outreach and Distribution: For 35 years, Corporate Accountability International and its members have led the way to protect people and save lives by waging and winning campaigns that challenge abusive corporations. Its Value [the] Meal campaign to challenge corporate abuse of our food has been challenging the fast food industry, McDonald’s; this award-winning campaign has mobilized more than 2,500 health professionals calling on McDonald’s CEO to stop marketing its junk food to kids, and has called for the retirement of McDonald’s junk food peddling mascot, Ronald McDonald. Using a mix of grassroots activism and long-term corporate engagement, Corporate Accountability International works tirelessly to ensure corporations are held accountable for policies, practices, and products that endanger public health, the environment, and human rights. As one of the nation’s leading membership organizations challenging the food industry, Corporate Accountability International brings expertise in building coalitions and winning campaigns to the Project.
