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Kate Adamick, JD
Kate Adamick, president of Food Systems Solutions LLC, is a New York City-based consultant specializing in institutional meal reform, including comprehensive farm-to-cafeteria programs as a way to improve institutional food and aid in developing local and sustainable agriculture systems. Her clients have included school districts, hospitals and retirement communities across the United States.
As the Project Director during the inaugural year of the SchoolFood Plus Initiative, Adamick successfully led a multi-tiered, multi-agency effort to improve the eating habits, health and academic performance of New York City’s 1.1 million public schoolchildren by incorporating more locally-grown fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes into the school lunch program.
Adamick is experienced in developing collaborative efforts among community members, NGOs and local government agencies, and her work has focused on integrating school-based programming, institutional change, and coalition-building to create the structure necessary to support and reinforce the healthful transformation of the school meals system. Adamick’s eclectic past also includes her careers as a corporate attorney, a professional chef in both fine dining and senior living communities, and a small business owner. She is currently exploring opportunities for large urban school districts to effect positive change in food manufacturing practices through their collective economic influence.
Adamick is a frequent speaker on institutional food systems, sustainable agriculture and childhood obesity issues. She has been a guest lecturer at Montefiore Medical Center’s Medical Grand Rounds, and at both Columbia University and New York University. She has also been a featured speaker at Alice Waters’ "School Lunch Initiative Roundtable" at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C., and at conferences held by the Community Food Security Coalition, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, FoodService Directors Magazine, Philadelphia’s Food Trust, Chicago’s Healthy Schools Campaign, Westchester Coalition for Better School Food, Dutchess County Medical Society and Westchester Dietetic Association.
In addition to being a member of Slow Food, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, Chef's Collaborative and NY Farms!, Adamick sits on the National Farm-to-School Executive Advisory Committee and on the Advisory Boards of the New York Coalition for Healthy School Lunches and the Westchester Coalition for Better School Food.
She was featured in an August 2005 New York Times article on farm-to-school programs, appeared in a September 2006 New Yorker article about school food reform, and her op-ed on industrial organics was published in the San Francisco Chronicle in August 2006. She is also featured in “Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children,” by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes (HarperCollins, 2006). Her frequent essays relating to food systems can be found on www.ChefAnn.com/blog.
Adamick’s clients include the Berkeley Unified School District (California), Montecito Union School District (California), Katonah-Lewisboro School District (New York), the Manhattan Country School (New York), St. Francis Hospital (New York) and The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.