Peter Ruddock – President
Peter Ruddock is an advocate for sustainable food and all things that strengthen local food economies. He believes that when we make food choices, we must employ a triple bottom line: choosing food that is good for the Earth, good for all of those who work to bring it to us, and good for our health when we eat it.
Over the years, Peter has honed his advocacy by volunteering and working for numerous organizations whose missions complement his own, including Slow Food and Slow Money, the Ecological Farming Association and the California Food Policy Council. Most recently, he worked as the Policy Director of the COOK Alliance, advocating for policy change which would support homemade food businesses and make them more widely legal.
Early in 2022, Peter created Resilient Foodsheds, an organization which acts as a clearinghouse for food policy for small food and farm businesses. With it, he creates programs which educate entrepreneurs on how to work within the law while being sustainable, and which advocate for policy change to create a more resilient, equitable and inclusive food system.
Christoph Hille – Vice President
During college, Christophe worked on a vegetable farm in northern Virginia, a job that changed the direction of his life. For the next 20 years, he worked in diverse roles across the food industry—line cook, executive chef, restaurant owner, retail meat company manager and food systems consultant.
Christophe has been a managing partner in two restaurants and one nose-to-tail butchery. Christophe advises restaurant, retail and wholesale businesses in the local foods landscape, with a particular focus on feasibility analysis, concept development and talent recruiting. He earned his B.A. from Wesleyan University, an Associate’s Degree in Culinary Arts from the New England Culinary Institute and a M.S. in Food and Nutrition from New York University. He lives with his wife and two kids in Maplewood, New Jersey.
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.
Mahesha Subbaraman, Esq. – Secretary
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.
April Jones
April Jones is the founder of the Pinehurst Farmers Market located in downtown Columbia, South Carolina in the Pinehurst neighborhood. April advocates for her community as part of the food justice and food sovereignty movement. She is passionate about community, gardens, and farmers markets.
She is a homesteader, writer, public speaker, blogger, recipe developer, book reviewer and more. She contributes content to her blog Frolicking Americana, Columbia Living Magazine and to state newspapers and national magazines, including Mother Earth News, Country Lore, The Natural Farmer, Grit, and Ark Republic. April is an Ecoparent Magazine Emerging Leader in food and agriculture nominee and writes for the Farmers Market Coalition. Connect with April at Pinehurst Community Action and at Pinehurst Farmers Market.
Baylen Linnekin, Esq.
Baylen Linnekin is an attorney, author, and scholar. He serves on the board of the nonprofit Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund and also served as a founding board member of the Academy of Food Law & Law Policy. Linnekin’s first book, Biting the Hands That Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable (Island Press, 2016), reveals how federal, state, and local regulations often proscribe sustainable food practices.
His writings have appeared in the Wisconsin Law Review, Chapman Law Review, Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Fordham Urban Law Journal, Journal of Food Law & Policy, Boston Globe, N.Y. Post, Chicago Tribune, Newsweek, Reason, Huffington Post, and many other publications. He has appeared on NBC, CBS, MSNBC, NPR, BBC Radio, and dozens of other TV and radio stations and has been quoted by the N.Y. Times, Wall St. Journal, Washington Post, L.A. Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, The Guardian, Rolling Stone, and many other top news outlets.
Linnekin earned an LL.M. in agricultural and food law from the University of Arkansas School of Law; J.D. from Washington College of Law; M.A. in learning sciences from Northwestern University; and a B.A. in sociology from American University. He lives in Maryland.