Susan Lightfoot Schempf

Susan Lightfoot Schempf, co-director of the Wallace Center at Winrock International, brings 20 years of experience in direct service, community organizing, nonprofit leadership, and equitable food systems development to the center. She has dedicated her life’s work to building relationships of solidarity across communities, nourishing leadership, facilitating collaboration, and realizing food sovereignty. She was the founding executive director of the Noyo Food Forest, a community-based organization in rural northern California, and launched that organization’s unique, on-site farm-to-school and agricultural training programs at Fort Bragg High School. She also served as a regional farm-to-fork manager for North Coast Opportunities, a California-based community action agency, where she spearheaded countywide farm-to-school initiatives and led planning and design for the Mendo Lake Food Hub; Susan also worked for the U.N.’s World Food Programme before joining Wallace in 2016. She holds a master’s in international development from Tulane University Law School.