The Hosts

Hannah Semler has a Master in International Food Business and Consumer Studies from the University of Kassel, in Germany, and is co-founder of FarmDrop.us, a woman-owned online farmer’s market tool for small-scale producers everywhere. 

Hannah is also principal of WholeCrops, a consulting firm specialized in food rescue. Through WholeCrops she serves as a Betsy and Jesse Fink Family Foundation Fellow, the foundation responsible for catalyzing ReFED, a national nonprofit leading in data-driven solutions to food waste. Introduced as a Fink Fellow, Hannah has been working for Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona for the past three years. Previously she worked under World Wildlife Fund and USDA food waste research and development grants. She has also provided strategic support to several private companies such as LeanPath, Spoiler Alert, Matriark Foods, and Starling Realtime, all addressing food systems connectivity and resourcefulness.

Ali Berlow has a Master of Food and Agriculture Law and Policy from Vermont Law School and is the author of two books: ‘The Food Activist Handbook: Big & Small Things You Can Do to Help Provide Fresh, Healthy Food for Your Community‘ and ‘The Mobile Poultry Slaughterhouse: Building a Humane Chicken Processing Unit to Strengthen Your Local Food System‘.

Ali is no stranger to audio story telling - she is the former co-host of The Local Food Report and produced her radio essay series ‘A Cook’s Notebook’ out of NPR member station, WCAI, in Woods Hole, MA. She’s also the former founding exec. director of Island Grown Initiative, a non-profit that supports the small family farms and farmers of Martha’s Vineyard. These days you can find Ali cooking, writing and living between southern Vermont and Wisconsin, her home state.

We are extremely grateful for support from the Betsy and Jesse Fink Family Foundation, making this podcast possible.