Kate Adamick, JD
Food Systems Solutions, LLC
New York, New York
Phone:917.628.8911
ChefKate@nyc.rr.com
Kate Adamick, Principal of Food Systems Solutions LLC, isa New York City-based consultant specializing in integrating operationalchanges, site-based programming, and public-private partnerships to implement,reinforce and support the healthful transformation of institutional mealsprograms and aid in developing local and sustainable agriculture systems.She has workedfor school districts, hospitals and retirement communities across the United States.
Adamick is experienced indeveloping collaborative efforts among community members, NGOs and localgovernment agencies, and her work has focused on integrating school-basedprogramming, institutional change, and coalition-building to create thestructure necessary to support and reinforce the healthful transformation ofschool meals systems.Adamick’s eclecticpast also includes her careers as a corporate attorney, a professional chef inboth fine dining and senior living communities, and a small business owner.
Adamick is a frequent speakeron institutional food systems, sustainable agriculture and childhood obesityissues, and has appeared on stage with such notables as Dr. Marion Nestle,Morgan Spurlock and Chef Ann Cooper. Adamick is a regular guest lecturer at New YorkUniversity, ColumbiaUniversity, and Universityof California at Santa Barbara, has presented at MontefioreMedical Center’sSocial Medicine Grand Rounds, and has co-taught a course called “Blueprint fora Green School”at Antioch University NE.Shehas also been a featured speaker at Alice Waters’ "School Lunch InitiativeRoundtable" at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C., andat conferences held by Yale University, the Community Food Security Coalition, theInternational Association ofCulinary Professionals, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, FoodService DirectorsMagazine, Field to Plate, Philadelphia’sFood Trust, Chicago’s Healthy Schools Campaign, Westchester and Rockland Coalitionsfor Better School Food, and The Orfalea Foundations’ AnnualChildren's Center Directors Retreat..
As the Project Directorduring the inaugural year of the SchoolFoodPlus Initiative, Adamick successfully led a multi-tiered, multi-agencyeffort to improve the eating habits, health and academic performance of New York City’s 1.1million public schoolchildren by incorporating more locally-grown fruits,vegetables, whole grains and legumes into the school lunch program.Adamick currently serves as the director ofthe highly regarded s’Cool FoodInitiative (www.sCoolFood.org) in Santa Barbara County, California.
In addition to being a memberof Slow Food, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, Chef's Collaborative and NY Farms!,Adamick sat on the National Farm-to-School Executive Advisory Committee and currentlysits on the Advisory Boards ofBetterSchool Food, the New York Coalition for Healthy School Foods, and AubinPictures’ “What’s On Your Plate?”
Adamick has appeared innumerous articles in the New York Times and USA Today about school lunchprograms and farm-to-school initiatives, appeared in a September 2006 NewYorker article about school food reform, and her op-ed on industrial organics waspublished 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),has been a guest on PBS’s “To The Contrary,” and appears in the documentaryfilm “Two Angry Moms.”Her frequentessays and podcasts relating to food systems can be found on www.LunchLessons.org.
Among Adamick’s clients are theOrfalea Fund and the Berkeley Unified School Districtin California; the Colorado Health Foundationand the Children’s Health Foundation in Colorado;the Alexander DawsonSchool in Las Vegas; The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma;and numerous hospitals and school districts throughout New York.