Michael Alberts (HE/him)

Mike has been involved with Slow Food Portland for more than 20 years, innocently joining up when he found a group of people who shared his love of “just eating great food!” His family became involved in the CSA movement, now hosting an organic farm CSA drop off at their house for the past decade.

As a general surgeon, he was confronted daily with how eating good, local foods directly contributed to his patients’ health and helped them avoid and manage chronic illnesses. Although retired from surgery, he keeps current with science by always having a fermentation project alive on his kitchen counter which more often than not works. He is active in food distribution to Portland’s large houseless population, volunteering preparing and serving food in Old Town.  

He considers himself a native Oregonian, although spending his first year of life in St. Louis made him a serious Cardinals fan. When not out in the garden you can find him hiking in the Gorge, or researching his next trip to a far off land which always involves a food tour or farm visit. 

Mike brings his corporate Board experience to Slow Food Portland and will be involved in the re-emergence of our local events and convivia.

Mary Silfven (she/her)

Born and raised in Bend, Oregon, Mary has a deep love for the abundance of food that Oregon provides. Mary’s grandfather was a chef and restauranteur in Bend. Her father and grandfather taught her to cook at a young age, leading to a lifelong love and appreciation for the power of a good meal.

Following in her grandfather's footsteps Mary pursued a career in cooking, training at The Natural Gourmet and the Culinary Institute of America. After more than a decade working in the industry as a pastry chef, she decided to pursue her Master’s in Public Health at the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health. She hopes to use her degree to help promote food sovereignty and create sustainable and equitable food systems, ensuring that everyone has access to nourishing foods.

Mary embodies the principles of Slow Food through her diverse experiences and commitment to creating fair and accessible food systems. Her strong dedication to environmental justice, particularly within food systems, underscores her mission to bridge climate awareness, equity, and regenerative agriculture for a more just future. Mary believes food is a human right, and aims to support the democratization of healthy, sustainable food systems that are resilient to climate change. By joining the Slow Food Portland Board, Mary hopes to help build resiliency and encourage appreciation of our local food system by connecting communities more deeply to their food.

LANI KINGSTON

Lani is a consultant and writer with over 15 years of global food industry experience. Her work spans a wide range of projects, including establishing the European offshoot of Brooklyn’s MAST Chocolate, leading a ‘food waste’ powered cooking school in Australia, and designing a coffee company steeped in local traditions in Singapore.

Lani’s career has been dedicated to education and the promotion of sustainable food systems. She has promoted farm-to-table practices while working with Chef Dan Barber at Blue Hill at Stone Barns; and currently advocates for Chef Barber’s Row 7 Seed Company in Portland. She also directs education and conference programming at Coffee Fest, and teaches the Anthropology of Coffee at Portland State University.

Her books, include Spill the Beans: Global Coffee Culture, How to Make Coffee: The Science Behind the Bean, and Designing Coffee. Her work has been featured or profiled in CNN, Tatler, Conde Nast Traveler, Huck Magazine, Taste & Travel, and more. 

Lani, who holds Masters degrees in Food Studies and Education, is also a pastry chef and barista and an enthusiastic advocate for Slow Food Portland’s vision. She is eager to contribute her expertise to promoting good, clean, and fair food in Oregon while fostering community connections and celebrating cultural food traditions. 


Beth Gates (she/her)

Beth brings her love of cooking, gardening, baking, cheese making, and eating as well as over 25 years of project, program, business and non-profit management experience to her role in Slow Food Portland. In 2019 she completed her graduate certificate in Sustainable Food Systems at Portland State University, and she has taught cooking classes to teens through various programs in the region. She is also a founding member of Cook First Portland, a collaborative that inspires folks to cook at home.

Beth’s role with Slow Food Portland is to help create a sustainable volunteer-run organization that inspires people in the Portland metro area to seek out, appreciate, and advocate for food that is good, clean and fair.

CHRISTINA HEIMANN (she/her)

Originally from the Garden State, Christina’s deep-rooted love for food blossomed as a child, plucking tomatoes straight from her grandparents' backyard garden. Since then, she has been passionately committed to cultivating a more equitable and resilient food system. Previously, her work has focused on addressing structural barriers to food access. She has also worked on a variety of food systems projects that have included building community gardens, promoting local food in school cafeterias, and sharing her culinary knowledge through community cooking classes.

Having recently earned her master's degree in nutrition from the National University of Natural Medicine, Christina possesses a deep appreciation for and understanding of the profound impact that food has on our health and well-being.

As a nutritionist and food enthusiast, Christina is driven by her belief that everybody deserves access to food that is nourishing to their bodies, their communities, and the Earth. Joining Slow Food Portland's board, she aims to forge meaningful connections within communities, creating joyful experiences centered around food while strengthening ties to local food systems.

Elizabeth Voth (she/her)

Elizabeth lives in Silverton, Oregon, among the wild Cherry blossoms and Chickadees of Silver Creek--land first stewarded by the Calapooia people.

Each day, she drives north past Topalamahoh--wooded hill of the Molalla people, and crosses the Willamette River at Wallamt falls salmon fishing grounds, to Portland. There her work in nutrient-dense food connects people to sustainable pasture-raised proteins that she handcrafts to meet their menu needs.

Her English/German heritage centers on methods for preserving garden produce and sharing homemade recipes at family gatherings. While as a child her favorite activity was wearing rain boots 365 days a year to explore seasonal streams in the forest, now she uses inspiration from a masters degree in education to study and share how microbes from healthy soil can be a vital phase of preparing our fruits, vegetables and fungi, seeds, meats, and beverages. Elizabeth is developing a nutrition consulting program that relies on food preparation methods that optimize these beneficial microbes.

For her, committing to equity means her livelihood is designed to meet her current needs, but also pay due respect in historic reparations and furthermore become a gift for the future security of others.

She hopes her contribution to Slow Food equity and justice work is to help define the concept AND practice of intellectual royalties for cultural knowledge to strengthen communities who share BIPOC heritage around the world.

Scott Pedemonte (he/him)

Scott grew up in the small farming and logging community of Gaston, Oregon. The son of a Master Gardener, growing plants has always been a central part of his life. 

Since graduating high school Scott has become a lifelong learner and traveler. As a gardener at San Francisco General Hospital he helped start a program to teach community members how to grow and cook their own vegetables. From there he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, to work in community gardens as an Americorps member. Later he moved to Boston where he managed the research greenhouses at The Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. This allowed him to get a Certificate of Mastery in Sustainable Food Systems. Always a gardener at heart, this education fueled his interest in soil science and sustainable agriculture. He returned home to Oregon in 2023 where he obtained a Permaculture Design Certificate from Oregon State University. 

Scott came to Slow Food Portland because of the three main ethics we stand for: Food should be delicious and nutritious. It should be grown sustainably. It should be grown and prepared by people who are treated fairly. Blending his knowledge of sustainable agriculture, soil science, and community engagement Scott hopes to change our food systems for greater social and environmental justice.

Cody Onthank: Media Partner

Noah Cable

Noah is a serial Entrepreneur. Since his first company when he was 9 pushing a lawn mower around Reedsport Oregon, Noah has been working to grow a business. With over 20 years of innovation and operation experience, Noah has provided business strategy and growth to some of the most iconic brands in Portland Oregon.

After half a decade in the insurance business, Noah launched Sol Pops a sustainable organic and local paletas business in Portland that ran for several years. After a 2 year stint at The Woodsman Market, Noah moved to Bunk Sandwiches where he took them from 3 stores to 10 and tripled their gross revenue. These days Noah is a partner at Wellspent Market. A born host, he loves to entertain, cook and - most of all - eat good food.

MEL Gregg (She/her)

Mel hails from Down Under - in fact, a small island off the coast of lutruwita/Tasmania, which is technically down under Down Under. A sheep grazier's daughter, she moved to Portland in 2013 after a career in academia. For the past decade, she led User Experience research at Intel, and in 2022 established the first product team focused on carbon reduction and green software. She now works as a consultant and professor focused on minimizing the ecological impacts of technology consumption.

Mel's strong connection to land and country has been challenging to maintain on another continent, so she joins Slow Food Portland to expand her knowledge of the local food system, and connect our work to regenerative agriculture and sustainability activism globally.

Katie Gourley (she/her/they)

Katie is a sometimes farmer, sometimes baker, sometimes writer, sometimes zine maker, and always seed nerd. Sicilian and Irish ancestry living on unceded Cowlitz & Clackamas land. Over the years, Katie has worn many hats in the food system as a pastry chef, farmer, cheesemonger, researcher, and seed saver. Katie worked in farmers market management before pursuing a Masters in Urban Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. There, she focused on food systems planning and community-based research with grassroots seed savers. 

These days, Katie splits her time working on local CSA farms in the Portland area, running a dry bean CSA with her partner as they work to start their own farm, and baking custom whole grain cakes for community. 

As a farmer and a baker, Katie is motivated by regional food systems, wild fermentation, and alternative economies. As a Slow Food board member she volunteers with market scouts, helps plan events and educational opportunities and she is involved in the organizational efforts to bring the emerging Slow Beans movement to Slow Food North America. 

Madi Taylor (she/her/they)

Madi’s Slow Food journey began at 2012’s Terra Madre gathering in Turin, Italy, while she was studying food politics and culture through the University of Washington. She has worked on a variety of food systems projects, including organic farming, school garden programs, political advocacy, farmers markets, and affordable housing food access programs. 

Madi’s role with Slow Food Portland is to build projects and partnerships to develop a food system that is socially just, with the goal of dismantling the barriers of racism, classism, gender discrimination, and other systemic oppression in our food system. She will work to align the PDX chapter of Slow Food with the Slow Food International vision, and leverage Portland’s strengths toward real change in our local communities. 

Alissa Leavitt

Alissa is a graduate of Portland State University with both a Master of Public Health in Health Policy and Management (2007) and a Bachelor of Science in Community Health Education (2005). Her interests include food systems, nutrition, environmental health, and community and public health. Currently, she is Instructor in Health Studies at Portland Community College and at Portland State University/Oregon Health & Science University. 

Alissa’s role with Slow Food Portland is to expand opportunities for students and youth to explore how food is produced, transformed, distributed, prepared and consumed, as well as how food systems influence global health and economic issues. She hopes to coordinate experiential programs with the Foods & Nutrition Lab at the Rock Creek Campus and empower young people to be a part of the good, clean, fair food movement.

Stephanie Celin (she/her)

Stephanie brings her enthusiasm for all things food (cooking, baking, fermenting, preserving & consumption) and multiple years of marketing & project management experience to her role at Slow Food Portland. Stephanie is honored to be a part of an extensive network of like-minded people who are making a difference in their local community’s lives through food education, supporting local food producers, and having the vision to transform our current food system into a more sustainable and fair one.

Stephanie’s role with Slow Food Portland is to increase public awareness of the organization’s initiatives & programs, broaden & diversify Slow Food’s audience, and increase engagement within the community.