Rick Nahmias, Founder/Executive Director, is a professional photographer, writer and filmmaker whose work focuses on the faces and stories of marginalized communities. Rick’s formal training as a cook, along with his exploration of California’s agricultural workforce in his body of work entitled “The Migrant Project: Contemporary California Farm Workers,” planted his feet in both the foodie and food justice worlds. These varied interests, along with his conviction that that all people everywhere deserve access to fresh nutritious food, culminated in the founding of Food Forward.

Meg Glasser, Managing Director, was our first employee and takes on the exciting tasks of developing community partnerships, developing new and ongoing programs, strengthening our funding base, managing CAN IT!, our food preservation workshops and products, and expanding Food Forward into an even stronger organization. Before joining Food Forward, Meg was the Program Director for Trekking LA, and the West Coast Regional Manager for Urban Farming. Meg is part of the LA Food Policy Council, sits on the advisory board of LA Regional Food Hub Development Committee and was a US Delegate for the International Slow Food conference in 2011. Additionally She is the Chair of the LA Master Food Preservers Fundraising Committee.

Max Kanter, Volunteer Coordinator, comes to us as a recent graduate of Vermont’s Middlebury College, where he studied geography and geographic information systems. Max has a passion for fresh, affordable, healthy food, and encompasses a can-do energy that supports our mission at Food Forward. While in Vermont, he founded and organized the town of Middlebury’s first community garden, bringing together property owners, local organizations, student volunteers, and master gardeners to cultivate a sustainable community garden. Max also coordinated youth theater arts programing in Santiago, Chile while working with Voluntarios de La Esperanza. Aside from working at Food Forward, Max likes to spend his time speaking Portuguese and Spanish, cooking, exploring cities, hiking, and theater-going.

Julie Hoang Lam, Harvest Coordinator, comes rolling in from Orange County, where she grew up enjoying the outdoors and fruitful landscape.  She is ecstatic about coordinating harvests, building food pantry partnerships, establishing a strong relationship with property owners and finding new avenues to feed the hungry. Besides working at Food Forward, she enjoys creating artwork that encourages the viewer to think about problems and solutions to our current environmental issues. She enjoys cooking, gardening, biking, hiking, lindy hopping and believes that the saying “Live, Love and Laugh” should be the main motto for one’s life.

Martha Penhall, Ventura County Coordinator, grew up in Hawaii and began her lifelong community activism teaching kids how to swim at the ripe old age of 11. Her “whatever it takes” attitude coupled with her excellent interpersonal and organizational skills has led her up the ladder to the top in her field of marketing. She is a successful author, artist and animal advocate. Any daylight left in her 24 hours is spent swinging a club on the golf course.