Our People

Our free meal sites and food pantries are largely funded by the generosity of our community – people like YOU – neighbors feeding neighbors.

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FCCMP Staff

 

meghan williams
Meghan Williams, Operations Coordinator [email protected]

Meghan is new to the Pioneer Valley and is excited to join the community in providing food and resources to neighbors in need. She has previously worked on fruit and vegetable farms and food banks and is committed to the distribution of fresh vibrant food. She enjoys traveling, meeting new people, and learning new languages. When she is not working you can find her in the garden.


hannah macdonald
Hannah MacDonald, Pantry Coordinator

Hannah loves being a small part of the collective effort to help the surrounding community through her role at the Orange Pantry. She enjoys the outdoors, playing musical instruments and riding her electric unicycle!


Lisa Dewitt
Lisa DeWitt, Northfield Meal Site Coordinator [email protected]
Lisa DeWitt is passionate about food security and providing people with nutritious and delicious food. Throughout her careers in publishing and teaching, raising her children, and serving as a town leader, providing food to the community has been a consistent thread in her life. In recent years, Lisa served community meals in Orange, taught cooking classes to school children, and catered fundraisers for North Quabbin Citizen Advocacy, the 1794 Meetinghouse, and other community causes.  

amy-connelly
Amy Connelly, Turners Falls Meal Site Coordinator [email protected]
Amy Connelly is a long time staff person who has been with us since the beginning. As a part of the FCCMP family, she was instrumental in establishing FCCMP’s first meal site. Amy is a Turners Falls resident who leverages her many networks and her long standing community relationships, bringing everyone together to take care of each other at the Turners Falls Meal Site. She is well respected and a force to be reckoned with. Stop by the meal site and see her in action!

laurie
Laurie MacDonald, Orange Meal Site Coordinator [email protected]
Laurie, a resident of Orange, was blessed by her mother, who she thought was the best cook in the world, and learned to cook by watching her prepare all kinds of ethnic foods. Since then she has had the privilege of raising eight healthy children with robust appetites, among them five active boys and three active girls, who ate their way to adulthood on the three steady meals a day she prepared for them. To put it simply, she has been cooking for a long time and she enjoys serving food to others.

Board Of Directors

 

fardeen chowdhury
Fardeen Chowdhury, Board President
Fardeen joined the FCCMP board in 2019 after visiting a few events with his wife Sarah Adam, who was already a board member at the time. He is a freelance web developer, and is the current designer and manager of the FCCMP website, as well as the resident technology expert for the FCCMP. He has spent over 10 years supporting non-profits in Massachusetts with his web expertise, and is always excited to help fight food insecurity using his particular skills wherever they are applicable.

 

Kurt Pearson
Kurt Pearson, Vice-President
Kurt has been employed at Clark’s Corvair Parts for 34 years. He serves the community by way of local missions with Greenfield United Methodist Church and a long standing relationship with Salvation Army. As a lifelong resident of Franklin county, he has seen first hand the needs of our community, and feels privileged to serve an organization that meets those needs.

 

stacey barnes
Stacey Barnes, Treasurer

Stacey has close ties to the Greenfield and Montague areas and calls Bernardston her hometown. She’s currently AVP of Mortgage Operations at Greenfield Cooperative Bank and has been in local community banking since 2007. She is a GCC and UMass Amherst Alumni. Food security has always been important to her and she’s happy to be a part of this community meals and pantry program.


Pamela Gilmore
Pamela Gilmore, Secretary
Pamela spent her professional life as a vocal coach and accompanist, specializing in opera. Her last 18 years were in the capacity of Director of Opera at Rutgers University. For over 30 years she commuted between Manhattan and the Pioneer Valley, and after retirement was able to focus on finding meaningful work in the community that she has come to love and call home. Joining the Board of FCCMP in 2019 has given her an opportunity to give back to this wonderful and diverse community, and lend a hand to an organization that does such critical work.

Marlynn Clayton, Board Member
Marlynn has lived in Greenfield for 40 years and was a founder of The Greenfield Center School, The Northeast Foundation for Schools (now The Center for Responsive Schools) and the Responsive Classroom approach to teaching. As a lifelong educator she has always believed in the value of service to others and for over 30 years has been a part of a community group that provides a meal once a month in Greenfield through FCCMP. Now retired she is thrilled to be able to support the goals of FCCMP in a deeper and broader way.

Lacey Arnold
Lacey Arnold, Board Member
Lacey is a transplant to the Pioneer Valley, after moving from New Jersey in 2013, and has since fallen in love with this community and the region itself. As the Wholesale Manager at Warner Farm in Sunderland, she has seen first hand the amount of food waste that occurs in the farming industry and is deeply passionate about working to help prevent food waste wherever possible. She joined the board in 2022 and is excited to contribute her passion and positivity to this already stellar organization.

Phoebe_Gelbard_photo
Phoebe Gelbard, Board Member
Phoebe grew up in western MA and has spent roughly a decade working on farms, in local kitchens, and teaching place-based environmental education in the Valley. After studying sustainable food systems and geographic information science (GIS) at UMass Amherst, she now spends her days helping people learn how to make maps. Phoebe loves cooking and sharing food, riding bikes, and eating whatever fruit is in season..

 


barbara zanca
Barbara Zanca, Board Member
Barbara has lived in Orange since 2004 and got involved with food insecurity through a need to feel useful during the early days of the pandemic quarantine. She found a volunteer spot with the local food pantry and got drawn in by the enthusiasm of our Executive Director, Rachel Berggren. Barbara joined the Board of Directors within a couple of months and has found a home among a group of truly passionate community food insecurity benefactors.

Advisory Board

 
Mary Bell, Bernardston Marian Boyd, Lynn
Jack Golden, Leyden Phyllis Jeswald, Conway
Anna Bognolo, Greenfield  

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~ Anne Frank