Jeanette Abi-Nader started as the Executive Director of City Schoolyard Garden in 2013 with the vision of transforming our work for social justice impact. In 2020 we became Cultivate Charlottesville and in 2021 launched a Co-Executive Director role with Jeanette focusing on Advocacy & Systems. Before Cultivate, she worked for a dozen years with the national food justice nonprofit, the Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC). CFSC co-founded the National Farm to School Network and was instrumental in the passing of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. As CFSC’s Evaluation and Training and Capacity Building Director, Jeanette authored publications on strategic evaluation design including Whole Measures for Community Food Systems, Community Food Project Indicators of Success, and Growing Communities Curriculum.
Jeanette is the former Board Treasurer for the American Community Gardening Association, Vice President of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group Board, and a founding member of the Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative (GFJI). GFJI is a national network focused on dismantling racism in the food system.
Jeanette is an experienced farmer, having launched the first community supported agriculture project in the state of Louisiana and as Director of Farms for Frontier Natural Products Co-op. She has a Masters of Science in Sustainable Systems/Agroecology and is a certified permaculture designer and instructor.
Email: jeanette@cultivatecharlottesville.org
You can read more about the intention behind the Co-Executive Director model here.
