Catherine Sands

Catherine Sands is a front-line community food systems organizer, educator, network facilitator, capacity builder, and evaluator/learning partner living in Western MA.  Catherine brings to her work a commitment to social change and a belief in the potential of groups of people coming together to create powerful solutions to entrenched social issues.  She is an adjunct professor of food systems and food justice at the UMASS Stockbridge School of Agriculture. As director of Fertile Ground, established in 2001, Catherine provides school districts with technical assistance in developing curriculum-integrated teaching gardens, mentoring and evidence tracking programs that unify school communities around growing fresh food and cultivating local knowledge. Since then she has provided technical assistance to the MA Food Planning process, conducting listening sessions with food and justice groups; and is designing evaluation processes for community food projects throughout New England to strengthen the impacts of their programs to improve health and access to good food. Catherine holds a Master’s degree from the University of MA/Amherst Center for Public Policy and Administration, with a focus on food access and social justice.