Keynote: Finian Makepeace

Finian Makepeace is the Co-Founder, Policy Director & Lead Educator of Kiss the Ground. He is a renowned presenter, media creator, and thought leader in the field of regenerative agriculture and soil health. His dedication to Kiss the Ground’s mission of “awakening people to the possibilities of regeneration”, has motivated him to develop training programs, workshops, and talks designed to empower people around the world to become confident advocates for this growing movement.

Session Presenters:

Susan Alexander is the Lamoille Regional Solid Waste Management District (LRSWMD) Manager. She led the team to secure a Northern Borders grant leveraging other funds to build an aerated static pile composting facility at an abandoned biosolids site. Susan formerly served on the Board of Highfields Center for Compost and has a B.S. in Soil Science from Cornell.

Toby Alves is a Product and Zero Waste (PZW) Specialist at Eco-Products. As a PZW Specialist, Toby works to develop composting infrastructure, keeps up to date on local legislation, assists food service operators by developing waste diversion systems and connects haulers and composters with generators of organic materials. Prior to joining Eco-Products Toby managed a food scrap hauling and composting business in southern Maine, sold finished compost and organic amendments throughout New England and has helped manage one of the only private golf clubs in the country with no synthetic fertilizers and no pesticides. When not out on the compost trail, Toby and his family operate Grasshopper Hill Farm in the Rangeley Lakes Region of Maine.

Sally Brown is a Research Professor at the University of Washington. She is a Fellow in the Soil Science Society of America. She was recently appointed to the USDA Committee on Urban and Innovative Agriculture. She writes the Connections column for Biocycle. She loves compost.

Corey Berman is the Manager for UVM’s Recycling and Zero Waste Program. He helped position UVM as a leader in sustainable materials management by collaborating with staff and students on a variety of initiatives diverting and reducing UVM’s waste stream. His responsibilities include strategic and project planning, managing daily operations, conducting campus education and outreach, and overseeing research and data collection. Corey has worked in the field of environmental sustainability for over 20 years, from the Connecticut Energy Co-op to the Dept. of Energy’s Energy Star Program, finally joining UVM in 2005. He was one of the first participants in UVM’s Leadership for Sustainability Graduate Program and is a current board member of the College and University Recycling Coalition.

Cat Buxton is a change facilitator working to build the social mycelium that holds our communities together. She promotes soil health and food system change through education and advocacy, working with individuals, schools, community groups and statewide organizations to make a difference one meal, one compost pile, and one landscape at a time. Cat leads Land Listener workshops with the Soil Carbon Coalition, and organizes the Upper Valley Apple Corps and a host of other projects, including the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition. She consults, teaches, and presents about soil and ecosystem health to individuals of all ages and groups of all sizes. Learn more about her work at www.growmorewasteless.com.

Andrew Carpenter is a certified soil scientist, crop advisor, and nutrient management planning specialist. He has extensive experience in research, planning, and handling technical issues around the reuse of organic residuals. Andrew received an M.S. in Plant, Soil, and Environmental Science at the University of Maine. In 2003 he founded Northern Tilth, LLC an environmental consulting firm focused on organic waste management and building soil health.

Zach Cavacas is the owner/operator of Music Mountain Compost. He is a Vermont native and a resident of Stockbridge, Vermont for over five years. Zach founded Music Mountain Compost as a way to provide a service that would make people's lives easier and also help the local community. We are proud to be apart of the small business economy that we have in Vermont. Zach has a background in homesteading which gives our business a great perspective on the compost laws and the best principles to use the materials to be an asset for our environment. Zach is also avidly involved in the local community as he is a Firefighter, Constable, Town Lister, and Free Mason.

Natasha Duarte is the Director of the Composting Association of Vermont (CAV). She represents CAV in policy initiatives, develops and leads outreach and education initiatives, and promotes the production and use of compost as vital to soil health through practices that contribute to water quality, plant vigor, and environmental resilience. Community scale composting was the cornerstone of Natasha’s Peace Corps work in Senegal, West Africa, where she helped farmers reclaim land from termite mounds and turn the poorest areas of their fields into the most productive. In 2019-2020 Natasha led a team of organics experts assembled to work with the Northeast Recycling Council on a USDA Rural Utilities Services funded project – “Implementing Rural Community Composting in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont.” Natasha is an instructor for UVM Extension’s Master Composter Program and is also Chair of the Farm to Plate Network’s Food Cycle Coalition. She has an M.S. in Soil Science from N.C. State University and a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Vermont.

Tom Gilbert is the owner/operator of Black Dirt Farm in Stannard, VT. Tom has been working in and managing food scrap collection and composting operations for 25 years. Previously, as Executive Director of Highfields Center for Composting, Tom oversaw the organization's Close the Loop Vermont campaign, to develop community composting systems throughout Vermont, as well as its composting and collection operations, and Research and Education Program, which produced the Vermont Compost Operator Certification course. Tom has been involved in food systems policy in Vermont and has been an important voice in Vermont's food systems movement for the last two decades. Tom is a member of the Poultry Farmers for Compost Foraging and the Protect Our Soils Coalition. He previously served on the boards of the Composting Association of Vermont, the Northeast Kingdom Waste Management District, and the Center for an Agricultural Economy, and works actively in his community on food security and racial justice. Tom has lectured and consulted on composting, food scrap collection, and food systems throughout the US, in Canada, and in Ecuador. He is Town Moderator for the Town of Stannard.

Ham Gillett has had his hands in solid waste, recycling, and composting for the past 30 years. He helped start Woodstock (VT) Recycling & Refuse Corp., educating the public during a new town wide recycling mandate, running the office, selling compost, and occasionally driving a trash route. For DSM Environmental Services, he performed some pretty gross trash sorts from D.C. to Dayton to the South Bronx. He was also the office manager. Ham has held his current position for the past six years, working with residents, businesses, and schools to understand and comply with VT Act 148, the Universal Recycling Law. He is a Certified Vermont Master Composter and a founding member of P.U.T.R.I.D. (People Uncovering Trash Rotting in Dumpsters).

James Gonyaw is the Facility Manager for LRSWMD, where he oversees five drop-off sites and the composting operations at Lamoille Soil. He has 18 years of experience with LRSWMD in the MSW and recycling field.

Gordon Hilbun is the founder of One Earth Fund. He has actively worked in the carbon markets since 2006, in both renewable and voluntary emissions credits. He also loves compost.

Emilie Inoue has been with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets for 17 years and has primarily spent her career surveying for invasive pests (insects and pathogens). As the agency’s plant health team lead, Emilie works with the state entomologist, state survey coordinator, other state agencies and UVM-extension to implement statewide surveys and to provide outreach and education to the general public about these pest threats.

Dan Israel is the Senior Vice President of Growth for Compost Crew, the largest food scrap collection company in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Dan has led up the sales and marketing teams at Compost Crew since 2020. In 2019, he worked as an independent consultant, advising companies on approaches to becoming more sustainable.Prior to his work in the circular economy, Dan had over 20 years of experience designing, marketing, and selling software applications. He was Vice President and General Manager of the Government team at Vlocity, a fast-growing company (#24 on Forbes Cloud 100) that builds industry-specific apps on the Salesforce platform. He ran government marketing for Google’s Enterprise division, bringing cloud-based email and collaboration tools to federal, state & local government agencies across North America. Dan also worked at Oracle and Siebel Systems. Dan began his career in the federal government, working at the U.S. Department of Treasury and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Dan holds a Masters in Business Administration from U.C. Berkeley and a Bachelors degree in political communication from the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Washington, DC with his wife and three children.

Josh Kelly is the Solid Waste Program Manager at the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation. The Program oversees the regulation and implementation of solid waste management including waste reduction, separation, collection, hauling, facility management, disposal, reuse, recycling, composting, and producer responsibility services. This also includes compliance, education, and enforcement work for solid waste and salvage yards, along with the development and implementation of the State’s materials management plan. Josh has over 20 years’ experience as an environmental professional, having worked for the Institute for Sustainable Communities, the Highfields Center for Composting, and the Trust for Public Land. Josh has a BS in Environmental Studies and Biology from St. Lawrence University.

Maddie Kempner has worked as Policy Director for the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT) since 2015. She is passionate about advancing policies that support just livelihoods for farmers and farm workers, ecological health, and access to nourishing food for all.

Lori Large has over 20 years of applied social science experience with an emphasis in survey research design and implementation. Since joining Action Research in 2007, she has worked with dozens of public and private agencies to develop research-informed behavior change programs. Much of Lori’s recent work has focused on the application of community-based social marketing to waste reduction, recycling, and diversion behaviors. These projects have included research and program development for CalRecycle, the Cities of Sunnyvale and San Clemente in California; the city of Denver, Colorado; the City of Fort Worth, Texas; the Counties of King and Snohomish in Washington, the County of Alameda, California; Keep America Beautiful; and Salinas Valley Recycles(WA).

Brent LeHoullier is the Operations Manager for Agricycle Energy at the Hartland site in Vermont. Brent has been involved in agriculture his whole life, starting out working on his family’s dairy farm and at a farm equipment dealership. He spent 20 years working in the commercial maple syrup industry before transitioning into the role of General Manager at Grow Compost. Brent has a BA from the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Sarah Lillibridge joined the Lamoille Regional Solid Waste Management District (LRSWMD) team as Outreach Coordinator in 2021 and has a background working in human rights. She is passionate about composting, sustainable agriculture, and reducing food waste.

Trevor Mance is a Senior Business Development Manager for Casella Waste Systems. His responsibilities revolve around expanding beneficial reuse of organic materials (with an emphasis on food waste) across Casella’s footprint. Prior to working at Casella, Trevor started and operated a waste hauling business, TAM, which included a MRF and Compost facility in the Bennington Vermont area for 23 years. Trevor’s passionate about environmental issues and creating successful sustainability programs for our customers.

James Muir is the founder and CEO of Agricultural Digesters LLC. A lifelong marketing professional with seven years in agricultural biogas, Jim is connected to the web of suppliers required to successfully launch a reliable methane digester in Vermont, where finance sources and revenue streams vary greatly from farm to farm. Prior to this, Jim was a business development specialist for two biogas technology providers: America’s oldest biogas company, RCM Digesters; and PlanET Biogas GmbH, one of the world’s industry leaders. In 2019 he founded “Agricultural Digesters LLC” to fully develop American biogas projects and as well as consult with international companies.

Linda Norris-Waldt is Director of Advocacy and Chapter Relations for the US Composting Council, a national trade organization that advocates for the commercial composting industry. She was director of recycling for Frederick County from 1989-1999, and is a member of the MD-DC Composting Council Steering Committee and Maryland Compost Advocacy Coalition. She is part of the Frederick Compost Workgroup, a citizens advocacy group for composting and food waste in Frederick County. She lives in Middletown MD.

Julia Parker-Dickerson's passion throughout her career has been focused on environmental education. She is a teacher at Smilie Memorial School in Bolton, VT and a Master Gardener. In her small rural corner of Charlotte, Vermont she has been working with the local town government and neighbors to reclaim spaces at intersections and along roadsides to create beautiful gardens for all creatures to enjoy, great and small.

Corey Rossen, Ecoverse's Food Waste Recycling Sales Manager, has extensive experience in the fields of anaerobic digestion, depackaging and composting. In the years before Ecoverse, Corey worked in the anaerobic digestion industry in both the Project Development and Marketing Departments. He has a background in sales, marketing, and development. Corey holds two degrees (B.S. and B.A.) from Wittenberg University.

Stephanie Smith works at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture Food & Markets where she participates in the development and implementation of policies and programs supportive of the agricultural industry. Stephanie's focus is varied and includes hemp production and processing and cannabis quality control, plant health, and most recently food residuals management on farms. Prior to coming to the Agency she worked for municipal government in a variety of capacities, including in the Municipal Assistance Center at the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Boston University and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Georgia.

Jim Stiles has been experimenting with producing Johnson-Su compost at his home in St. Albans for about 6 years. He has a BS in Environmental Science and Ecology from Marlboro College. After graduating, Jim established and ran an alternative energy store in Brattleboro. His experiences include working in IT and product support roles, fire sprinkler system design, volunteering with Greenpeace, crewing on the original Rainbow Warrior and participating in a number of campaigns, including a large acid rain protest, and protesting whaling in Peru. Throughout this, Jim has undertaken diverse personal projects, ranging from helping set up and run the first solar greenhouse conference (at Marlboro College in 1978), to building a prototype small boat designed for efficiency, an electric car, writing and publishing a climate change-themed novel, and many others.

Jennifer Tabanico is President and owner of Action Research, a firm that specializes in changing behavior for the public good by applying marketing and social science research to outreach programs that promote safe, healthy, and sustainable communities. Jennifer has a Master of Arts degree in Experimental Psychology and more than 20 years of experience developing behavior change programs for public and private agencies, including 15 years of work on stormwater and watershed protection programs. She has authored or co-authored works in academic outlets including the Journal of Environmental Psychology, Social Influence, and Social Marketing Quarterly. Most recently, Jennifer authored a book chapter on behavior change in the Handbook on Household Hazardous Waste. Jennifer also currently serves as an instructor for the University of California San Diego (UCSD) Extension’s Behavior Change and Sustainability certificate program.

Elly Ventura spent the last 10 years as the Outreach Manager for the Lamoille Regional Solid Waste Management District. She recently joined the Vegware US team as the Product & Zero Waste Specialist, and feels perfectly fit in her position of expanding the national composting infrastructure. Elly played a pivotal role in bringing Lamoille Soil to life, and is currently on board for the Composting Association of Vermont. She is also a Master Composter and holds a Compost Operator Certificate. Her favorite topic has always been organics management; don't ask her to stop talking about the importance of waste reduction practices!