Joe Ramagli – President
Joe Ramagli and his family run Just Earth Farm, a small-scale raw dairy committed to organic and local feeds, holistic animal husbandry, rotational grazing, and regenerative farm practices. Designed and managed according to the highest sanitation standards in raw milk production, they are listed by the Raw Milk Institute.
Joe is a lifelong public interest advocate and activist who has dedicated most of his professional life to social and environmental justice. While living in Fort Collins, Colorado, Joe worked as an adjunct professor of World Philosophy at CSU, a DOD of the Center for Justice Peace and Environment, and campaign manager of a successful campaign for Colorado House of Representatives District 52. During that time, he also engaged in international development and conservation work in both Nepal and Thailand. In the interest of becoming a more effective public advocate, Joe attended the only fully public-interest law school in the country, CUNY School of Law in Queens, New York. While there, Joe did outreach and pro-bono legal work for the Immigration and Refugee Rights Clinic where he represented individual clients and did Know-Your-Rights trainings within the NYC Muslim community. Having lived in many parts of the country in urban, suburban, and rural communities, Joe has an appreciation for people from all walks of life.
Joe lives with his wife and their two children on their farm outside of Eugene, Oregon. They live a blessed life eating local organic food, learning to farm smarter, and enjoying delicious milk from happy cows.
Marti Secondine – Treasurer
Marti is from Wichita, Kansas. Marti earned an undergraduate degree in accounting and a graduate degree from Wichita State University. Her professional experience has focused on budgeting, reporting, forecasts, operations and capital analysis, and new program development in both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
Marti is the mother of three children and has four grandchildren. Her hobbies include knitting, sewing, gardening, and dreaming up and doing projects with the grandkids.
Baylen Linnekin, Esq. – Secretary
Baylen J. Linnekin is a food lawyer, author, columnist, expert, consultant, adjunct professor of law, and scholar. He is the author of Biting the Hands That Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable (Island Press, 2016), which reveals how regulations often proscribe sustainable food practices.
Baylen has served as an expert in an ongoing federal skim-milk labeling case, has lectured to visiting Chinese food-safety regulators, and has taught the Food Law & Policy Seminar at George Mason University Law School for several years. He has spoken at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, and dozens of other top law schools, and at think tanks such as the Urban Institute and Heritage Foundation. He is a founding board member of the Academy of Food Law & Policy.
Baylen’s writing has been published by the Boston Globe, N.Y. Post, Des Moines Register, Reason, Huffington Post, Wisconsin Law Review, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, and elsewhere. He has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, Fox Business, BBC Radio, and dozens of other radio and TV programs. He earned an LL.M. in agricultural and food law from the University of Arkansas Law School and a J.D. from Washington College of Law. He is a new resident of Seattle.
Judith McGeary, Esq.
Judith McGeary is an attorney, activist, and sustainable farmer. After earning her Bachelors of Science from Stanford University and her law degree with high honors from the University of Texas at Austin, she clerked for a Federal Appeals Court and went on to private law practice. During that time, she became a passionate advocate of sustainable agriculture, and she and her husband established their own livestock farm. After seeing how government regulations benefit industrial agriculture at the expense of family farms, she founded the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance to promote common-sense policies for local, diversified agricultural systems.
Judith has been profiled in the Texas Observer, Edible Austin and Edible Houston, appears in the documentary Farmageddon, and has been interviewed on numerous radio shows across the country. Judith is on the Board of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, has served for several years as the Vice Chair of the USDA Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Animal Health, and is also active with Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and the Weston A. Price Foundation.
Mahesha Subbaraman, Esq.
Born and raised in Minnesota, Mahesha Subbaraman is a graduate of Amherst College and the University of Minnesota Law School. As an appellate attorney, he has represented clients in state and federal courts on a variety of ground-breaking legal matters. Before founding the law firm of Subbaraman PLLC, Mahesha served as an associate at the Minneapolis, Minnesota office of Robins Kaplan L.L.P. and as a staff attorney at the Arlington, Virginia headquarters of the non-profit Institute for Justice. Mahesha is dedicated to providing clients from all walks of life with effective appellate representation. His law firm has litigated cutting-edge legal issues in the areas of constitutional law, civil forfeiture law, business law, and immigration law. Subbaraman PLLC also provides pro bono appellate services to nonprofit organizations and individuals who otherwise cannot afford appellate counsel. He is delighted to bring his experience to the Board of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and to help increase access to foods from small sustainable farmers.