about : leadership
Staff
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Emily Torgrimson, Executive Director
Executive Director and co-founder Emily Torgrimson has transformed Eat for Equity from an idea to a movement. Combining her passions for food, community, and justice, Emily co-founded Eat for Equity in Boston in 2006 and brought Eat for Equity to Minneapolis. An energetic and resourceful community builder, she has organized over hundreds of benefit dinners, collaborating with farmers, artists, and community organizations. Emily was trained as a journalist at Boston University and has a Masters in Public Health from the University of Minnesota.
Branch Organizers
Board of Directors
Eat for Equity’s board of directors meets quarterly around a dinner table to help the organization grow sustainably and achieve its mission. Our board of directors has a wide range of skills and experiences: in community organizing, non-profit management, policy development, social work, education, and new media. Board members provide strategic guidance for the national Eat for Equity organization.
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Emilie Hitch, Co-Chair
Emilie Hitch is a classically trained Cultural Anthropologist with degrees from Yale University and The London School of Economics and ten years of experience applying her culture-rich perspective to the world of business and brand strategy. She is a former YMCA camp counselor and director, a previous resident of Arequipa, Peru, and a guest lecturer at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Her Strategy for Good workshops have served over 40 organizations in the Twin Cities through the application of business practices to non-profit challenges. She learned about Eat for Equity when her band, the Wailing Loons, was invited to perform at an event and she’s been excited about the great work for social change we’re doing in homes around the country ever since.
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Sarah Pritzker, Board Member
Even growing up as a child in St. Paul, Sarah knew she wanted to be involved with food. She tasted the wold as a bicycle guide for several years after graduating from Bowdoin College. But Minnesota called her home, and she decided to pursue her entrepreneurial food dreams by starting Finish Line Foods, a food company for athletes. She has an MBA from Carlson School of Management, and works with General Mills.
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Abby Sugahara, Secretary
Abby Sugahara is originally from New Jersey, though she feels she has always been a Minnesotan at heart. A traveler and lover of food, she studied and lived in Japan and could eat Japanese home cooking for the rest of her life. She loves the community surrounding food. At her recent family trip to Florida, she remembers food being passed from hand to hand, french fries flying off plates and even her baby grabbing for more. If you eat with Abby’s family, just remember you don’t get to keep all your food.
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Jenny Breen, Board Member
Jenny Breen has been a professional chef in the Twin Cities since 1986. She has been an advocate for local and sustainably raised foods, and has been working directly with farmers and producers since the mid 1980’s. Jenny teaches cooking and nutrition to adults and children at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, in the Twin Cities Food Coops and with Twin Cities schools, and currently presents on mindful eating, sustainable food systems and cooking as a public health strategy through various programs at the University of Minnesota. She is a 2009 recipient of an Archibald Bush Foundation Leadership Fellowship and completed her MPH Nutrition at the University of Minnesota in 2011. Her first cookbook “Cooking up the Good Life” which emphasizes local, seasonal whole foods cooking for families, was released in April of 2011 from the University of Minnesota Press.
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Tom Pfannensteil, Board Member
Tom loves the relational dynamic of Eat for Equity events. He is a finisher of 14 running marathons, and a cycler who especially enjoys the Fulton Gran Fondo.
