Food is a common theme in Fiona’s life and career. She has worked corporately developing and building food products and brands and also operated a regional lodge and restaurant focused on championing local ingredients. More recently she has worked with regional communities and not for profit organisations to strengthen local short supply chains between growers, producers and customers

On the home front Fiona is learning to grow and nurture an orchard and vegetable garden and loves keeping active in the mountains with her family of boys.

Fiona is passionate about regenerative local food systems and in this critical decade for the planet, excited to be working with the philanthropic community, connecting them with bold and innovative initiatives emerging in regenerative agriculture.

With the bush in her bones and business in her head, Jade Miles is a poly-jobist to the core. She’s a local food advocate and educator, business builder, food co-op founder, author, podcaster and regenerative heritage fruit farmer.

Together with her husband and three kids, Jade runs Black Barn Farm, a biodiverse orchard, nursery and workshop space in Northeast Victoria. She’s an active presence in the regenerative space, hosting school programs, permaculture and homesteading workshops while sitting on multiple boards – all in the name of reconnecting people to nature, food and a simpler existence.

Before landing at Sustainable Table, Jade ran her own business start-up consultancy for over a decade, worked as Industry Development Manager for the Regional Tourism Board and established the Beechworth Food Co-op for good measure. She brings this breadth of skills and relentless enthusiasm to her role at ST, where she joins the dots between Our Fund and incredible regenerative projects around the country to build capacity and expedite change.

“We all eat, and by celebrating our farmers and considering our choices we can make a profound difference to rural Australia, our health, our land and our culture.”

Jess Eddy is a degree-qualified nutritionist and passionate foodie who has spent much of the past decade working in Melbourne’s health and food industries. A former Sustainable Table volunteer, Jess has stepped into the Operations & Projects Coordinator role for the growing team, providing support for the day-to-day running of the organisation and fund.

Jess gets excited by food’s potential to create change, and the positive impact food can have on individuals, the community, and the environment. When she’s not at ST or running her side business, Jess loves to spend her time visiting one of Melbourne’s many cafes, restaurants and bars or her local farmers’ market.

Jodi is a connector, facilitator and sustainability consultant, based on Wurundjeri Country in Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges.

In her previous role as Program Manager, Ripe for Change (https://sustainabletable.org.au/fund-projects/), Jodi helped bring to life a place-based collaborative funding model that supported food system projects in south-east Melbourne, Victoria. What began in 2017 as a small community grants program, evolved into a powerful connector in the region and proved to be a successful funding model that has helped to shape where Sustainable Table is today. In her current position as Industry Development Manager, Jodi continues to connect, convene and support community leaders and innovators in Australia’s regenerative food and farming system. Seeing local, collaborative initiatives push the needle in a healthy, regenerative direction gives Jodi immense hope.

Jodi holds a Bachelor of Environmental Science (Honours) and more years’ experience within not-for-profit organisations, local and state government authorities, and academia than she cares to admit. Environmental sustainability challenges are her forte, with experience in sustainable food systems, integrated transport and land use planning, and urban water management.

Kristie’s passion for regenerative agriculture stems from her love of growing food and cooking. Over the past 8 years she has worked with regenerative food producers and retailers in broad roles that included communications, planning and strategy, sales and account management and operations.

Kristie is inspired by the opportunity for transformational change that regenerative farming represents and is on a mission to accelerate that change. Alongside her work at Sustainable Table, Kristie runs a baking business celebrating freshly milled whole regenerative Australian grain.

Megan lives and breathes sustainability and the majority of her work over the last 10 years has focused on leaving behind a more equitable and regenerative world than the one she was born into. She is an experienced educator, writer, researcher and sustainability consultant who loves to nerd out on all things systems change. Megan is really excited to use her storytelling skills to amplify the transformative work of folks in the regenerative agriculture industry.

In 2016, she walked 3500km across Southeast Asia as part of a project called Walk Sew Good, to learn from and share the stories of people creating fashion in positive and sustainable ways. Outside of her work with Sustainable Table, she runs an education social enterprise that connects young people with their impact and empowers them to be active citizens and change makers.

In her role as Executive Director of her Family Office, the Morris Group, Hayley leads the Group’s sustainability across their operations which span hospitality, tourism, brewing, aviation, and agriculture. Hayley also leads her family’s philanthropy and impact investments through the Morris Family Foundation with a focus on climate change and regenerative food systems.

Other than Sustainable Table, Hayley has founded several organisations including software business Impact Sustainability and strategic sustainability consultancy Rewild Agency. She has held various not-for-profit board roles including Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network, The Impact Club and The Next Economy.

The belief that every dollar we spend is a vote for the type of food system and world we would like to be a part of, is what Sustainable Table was founded on and the inspiration Hayley and Cassie had to start something that brought joy, humour and great tasting seasonal food to tackle some pretty big environmental challenges.

During her 12 years at Sustainable Table, Cassie leveraged her background in marketing and communications to build an organisation, and life, around an ethos that places individual actions at the heart of building resilient communities, food systems and a world that respects and restores the natural environment.

Some career highlights from her time at Sustainable Table included writing and producing The Sustainable Table educational cookbook, which won Best Sustainable Food Book at the 2012 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards; launching Sustainable Table’s previous website; developing the Give a Fork! campaign and launching Mt Martha Farmers’ Market.

Carolyn is an ambitious, driven, collaborative, community based, action orientated rural woman from North East Victoria. Having grown up on her family’s farm in South Gippsland, she has travelled extensively and explored meaningful ways to enact long term and powerful change. Now as a mother of 3 passionate young adults while managing an organic farm and building ORICoop, there is much to do in this world of disproportion across food, people and agriculture. Amongst her ambitions and hats is building farmer owned solutions, that include Australia’s first Ecological Credit and ORICoop, an Organic Producers Cooperative designed to enable a better share back to the producers, where it belongs. Connecting producers across commodities, States, production systems and supply chains.

She is excited to be in a room of ambitious doers and thinkers. Together there is much to be done!

Joshua is a Worimi man, farmer and academic, who shares the narration of Indigenous identity through agricultural truths in light of modern contexts.

Josh’s work seeks to connect traditional Aboriginal knowledge and history to current contexts, translating past wisdom and learning to future opportunities. His work combines the old and the new, weaving them together to develop new insights and findings.

He is undertaking higher degree research at Charles Sturt University, is the Indigenous Co-Chair of Reconciliation NSW and was recently recognised within the world’s top 50 young gastronomers.

He is an entrepreneur and business advisor, working predominantly in the Aboriginal cultural, agricultural and environmental spheres. He has worked with numerous of not for profits, businesses and the government to develop change and bring people on a journey of change.

Born into agriculture in the Upper Hunter Valley, NSW and having worked and travelled much of Australia and the globe, Justin now calls Western Australia home with his wife and teenage daughter. Justin brings decades of experience to focus on the necessary changes to our food and land use systems by managing the interface between Conservation, First Nations, and commercial agriculture. He co-founded and established RegenWA to provide support for practitioners of, and those interested in, regenerative agriculture, and has close ties with the farming community so he can effectively communicate their needs to different stakeholders.

Justin works with multiple NFPs, family offices, corporations and conservation organisations tackling wicked problems with blue ocean thinking and seeking solutions from well outside the box.Justin is one of Commonland’s West Australian partners (a Dutch-based global landscape restoration project enabler) to engage with the community and share the learnings and opportunities that regenerative agriculture offers. He is the Regenerative Ag advisor and Director of Impact Seed Partnerships (Impact Seed is WA’s peak capacity builder for impact investment and social enterprise development) working towards systems-change finance and entrepreneurship.

Completing his MBA in 2017, Justin sought to gain insight to the business world that he didn’t get exposure to from a life in agriculture. He observed there needs to be greater prosperity beyond the unsustainable perpetual growth mindset, and that many solutions lie in the unobserved or unrecognised spaces of community. His aim is to demonstrate that traditional owners already have the solutions to our structural and social problems and supports the Uluru Statement from the Heart and a First Nations voice to parliament.

Over the past 20 odd years Robert has been challenging and transforming the food and agricultural system in Australia. As a former organic dairy farmer and market gardener he has become known as a practical and hands on social entrepreneur working at the systems end of changing the way business can pivot away from the malaise the current food system works.

In 2004 he founded Food Connect, a dynamic multi-farmer food distribution enterprise with an innovative community-based distribution system. In 2009, the Food Connect Foundation was launched to increase the scope of the fair food movement internationally and across Australia.

Robert is a member of the national board of Australian Social Enterprise Advisory Group, co-founder of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance, and a founding member on the Board of The global software organisation Open Food Network. He is a contributing author to Fair Food, published by University of Queensland Press.

In 2018, he co-founded the Food Connect Shed to raise over $2million with the Food Connect community to buy the warehouse they’d been renting for over 12 years, through an equity crowdfunding campaign.

Rob is a well known speaker in the Fair Food movement. He loves his blended family of four children, and his favourite foods are beer, butter and good bread.

When she’s not championing food system resilience and connection through her life’s work the Open Food Network, this ground-breaking and land-healing human, together with her partner Kirsten and their two kids, split their time between Violet Town and a Yurt at Pukawidgee, their regenerative farm in Warrenbaynee. Here they’re exploring and enacting a collaborative farm share model that has ecological restoration at its heart.

Serenity is a co-founder of Open Food Network, and a Director of both Open Food Foundation and Open Food Network Australia. Her work with OFN focuses on sector and enterprise development; advocacy, research and project development and implementation to expand regenerative agriculture in Australia and the values-based supply networks that undergird it.

Her breadth of food system knowledge, connection and experience is integral to shaping and guiding the work of the Sustainable Table Fund – gee whiz we’re lucky to have her.

Ben has circa 20 years of experience across corporate advisory, legal advisory, M&A transactions and deal structuring in a variety of industry sectors. He has led (and invested in) many large commercial property, private equity, sustainable finance, infrastructure development and renewable energy transactions. He has spent many years in leadership roles, including in the environmental not-for-profit sector and one of Australia’s leading impact investment fund managers.

Ben is Managing Director of Kilara Capital, a deal origination and investment management business, dedicated to providing sustainable investment opportunities for a zero-carbon future. Ben leads the Kilara Private Equity Team and is responsible for overall management and strategy across the Kilara Group. Alongside his role at Kilara, Ben is co-Principal of his Melbourne based family office which focusses on deploying significant capital towards climate-smart and impactful projects and opportunities.

In her role as Executive Director of her Family Office, the Morris Group, Hayley leads the Group’s sustainability across their operations which span hospitality, tourism, brewing, aviation, and agriculture. Hayley also leads her family’s philanthropy and impact investments through the Morris Family Foundation with a focus on climate change and regenerative food systems.

Other than Sustainable Table, Hayley has founded several organisations including software business Impact Sustainability and strategic sustainability consultancy Rewild Agency. She has held various not-for-profit board roles including Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network, The Impact Club and The Next Economy.

Born into agriculture in the Upper Hunter Valley, NSW and having worked and travelled much of Australia and the globe, Justin now calls Western Australia home with his wife and teenage daughter. Justin brings decades of experience to focus on the necessary changes to our food and land use systems by managing the interface between Conservation, First Nations, and commercial agriculture. He co-founded and established RegenWA to provide support for practitioners of, and those interested in, regenerative agriculture, and has close ties with the farming community so he can effectively communicate their needs to different stakeholders.

Justin works with multiple NFPs, family offices, corporations and conservation organisations tackling wicked problems with blue ocean thinking and seeking solutions from well outside the box.Justin is one of Commonland’s West Australian partners (a Dutch-based global landscape restoration project enabler) to engage with the community and share the learnings and opportunities that regenerative agriculture offers. He is the Regenerative Ag advisor and Director of Impact Seed Partnerships (Impact Seed is WA’s peak capacity builder for impact investment and social enterprise development) working towards systems-change finance and entrepreneurship.

Completing his MBA in 2017, Justin sought to gain insight to the business world that he didn’t get exposure to from a life in agriculture. He observed there needs to be greater prosperity beyond the unsustainable perpetual growth mindset, and that many solutions lie in the unobserved or unrecognised spaces of community. His aim is to demonstrate that traditional owners already have the solutions to our structural and social problems and supports the Uluru Statement from the Heart and a First Nations voice to parliament.

Lauren’s personal professional experience spans 20 years in the ‘corporate world’ within large organisations globally. She is the current Head of Sustainability Strategy at Republic of Everyone and has spent her career proving the business case for sustainability, or put more simply, making doing good, good for business. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business, a Masters in Sustainable Development and is currently a PHD candidate at UNSW Business School focusing on sustainability and innovation.

Personally she is a woman of many interests, Lauren is also a mum of two, unexpected adventurer, podcaster, a wanna be regenerative farmer and an advocate for living more slowly and sustainably.

Philippa Hodson is a motivated and passionate foodie, mother and global citizen. She learned about Sustainable Table after buying our first cookbook way back when (which still commands pride of place on her shelf! Onya Pip) and has since become indispensable to our organisation.

Pip’s professional experience spans corporate remediation solutions, organic food manufacturing, fine dining, impact investing and grant making. She’s Executive Director and Chairman of the Board for The Garry White Foundation; was involved in our 2018 Victorian Community Grants program as a funder; and we’re thrilled that her skills and talents are now formally embedded within ST as a member of the Board.

As well as advocating for healthy and inclusive food systems, Pip advocates for daily horse rides (she’s a keen showjumper), weekend farmers’ market forays and crafting the most incredible wholefood recipes from scratch.