Network BGI Community Social Focus on Food and Agriculture
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Event Overview
Thursday, May 24, 2012 – Network BGI hosts another community social, this time focusing on Food and Ag. Confirmed guests include John Gardner, Ph.D. (BGI Dean), Nicole Capizzi (Seattle based Farmer), Peter Reinhardt Knutson (Loki Fish Owner), Jessica Redmayne (Current BGI Student & Sourcing Specialist for FishChoice.com) and Scott James (BGI Faculty and Founder of CORA).
Network BGI is proud to invite you to this month’s community social featuring food and ag table discussions. We have a wide range of food and ag professionals working in various sectors and industries, representing academia, private, public, and nonprofit organizations large and small. On May 24 you will have the opportunity to discuss current trends and topics of interests with these individuals as well as hear their own stories within their fields.
As always, this event is open to the public and we encourage you to bring a classmate, mentor, coworker, and/or friend. This is yet another great opportunity to build community with people in and outside of the BGI network. Back by popular demand and positive feedback is the World Café format to facilitate quality sharing of ideas.
Registration is now open. We hope you share in the food, drink, and chance to spend quality time with quality people. Contact events@bgi.edu if you have any questions.
Flow of Event
* 6:00 p.m. – Doors Open
* 6:15 p.m. – Welcome (Introduction)
* 6:25 p.m. – Would Café Explanation
* 6:30 p.m. – World Café Table Discussions
* 7:30 p.m. – Open For Networking
Guests & Bios:
John Gardner, Ph.D.
John has been an entrepreneur, an agricultural researcher, a passionate champion of sustainability, a teacher, a leader of community economic development and a senior academic administrator. He is now the Dean of the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, a charter business school among the first to offer an MBA in sustainability. Nearing ten years old with close to 500 alumni, BGI is charting a growth strategy to expand national offerings at its destination program at Islandwood on Bainbridge Island, and also grow an emerging effort in the Seattle metro area for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.
For the past four years, he was Vice President at Washington State University responsible for better leveraging all of WSU’s assets for economic growth and vitality of the state. Prior to WSU, he filled a similar role at the University of Missouri as Vice President for Research and Economic Development. In all, he has been a student, faculty member, or administrator at five land grant universities. John has also had experience as the Director of the NDSU Carrington Research Extension Center and was one of the founders and chief executives of AgGrow Oils, a 540 member LLC that integrated the production, processing, and marketing of both novel and designer oilseeds.
Scott James
Scott James is an entrepreneur, instructor, and advisor in the world of sustainability. BusinessWeek named Scott one of “America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs” in 2009 and Forbes profiled him as a “Game Changer” in 2010. The products from his most recent company (sold 2011) were featured in publications as diverse as Oprah’s O Magazine, National Geographic, Parents Magazine, the Washington Post, Outside Magazine, and US News & World Report. Scott is currently working on CORA (www.teamcora.com), curators of the Trash Backwards mobile app.
In addition to teaching at BGI, he teaches the the Sustainability Interterm course at University of Notre Dame, where he serves on the Advisory Council. Scott is passionate about permaculture and building resilience in local communities. He lives on a Bainbridge Island micro-farm with his wife and children.
Nicole Capizzi
Nicole Jain Capizzi operates Amaranth Urban Farm in Seattle, Washington and has been making her living farming, teaching, and writing about sustainable agriculture since 2002. She’s created viable urban farm businesses in Seattle and Milwaukee and aims to redefine the place of urban agriculture within the re-emerging local and sustainable business economy.
Nicole is a 2003 graduate of the organic farm apprenticeship at UC Santa Cruz, Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. She now also serves as a board member of the Seattle Chefs Collaborative and as a newly appointed commissioner for the King County Agriculture Commission and is a member of Tilth Producers of Washington, Puget Sound Beekeepers Association, National Young Farmers Coalition, and Cascade Harvest Coalition.
Peter Reinhardt Knutson, Ph.D.
Pete grew up in the Puget Sound Basin and graduated class of 1970 from Everett High School. Between 1970-1972 he did undergraduate work at Stanford where he also organized against the American War in Vietnam. (Pete’s memoir of that anti-war movement). He finished his B.A. at New School for Social Research, and was awarded his Doctorate in Sociocultural Anthropology by the University of Washington in 1987. His autoethnographic dissertation chronicled and analyzed the the dynamics of power and language in working class life aboard a commercial fishing vessel in the North Pacific.
He taught his first community college course in 1980 and have been a full-time faculty member at Seattle Central for fifteen years.
Pete feels strongly about the need to preserve wild ecosystems, he has been very involved in many of the conservation battles surrounding the preservation of wild Pacific salmon stocks, protection of salmon habitat and sustainable fisheries. Currently he is an elected Commissioner on the Puget Sound Salmon Commission, which is part of the Washington State Department of Agriculture. Since 1972 he has also worked as a commercial fisherman on North Pacific waters. His family maintains an independent fishing business which provides fish products to Seattle area Farmers Markets.
Jessica Redmayne
Jessica Redmayne currently serves as the Sourcing Specialist for FishChoice.com, an online database of sustainable seafood suppliers and producers. Prior to entering the seafood industry, she spent a significant period of time travelling around Latin America, diving and exploring. From this experience, she developed her passion for community economic development through business. She is currently pursing this interest through her MBA in Sustainable Business at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute. Jessica’s work for FishChoice primarily involves being a liaison between NGO’s and businesses in the seafood industry, helping various stakeholders in the sustainable seafood landscape recognize their sustainability and receive its subsequent market benefits.