Kate Adamick
Food Systems Consultant
Phone: (917) 628-8911
Email: ChefKate@nyc.rr.com
Kate Adamick, Principal of Food Systems Solutions LLC, is a New York City-based consultant specializing in integrating operational changes, site-based programming, and public-private partnerships to implement, reinforce and support the healthful transformation of institutional meals programs and aid in developing local and sustainable agriculture systems. She has worked for school districts, hospitals and retirement communities across the United States. Through her Cook for America™ culinary boot camps, she provides concentrated and comprehensive culinary training that transforms America’s school food service personnel into skilled and passionate Lunch Teachers™.
Adamick is a frequent speaker on institutional food systems, sustainable agriculture and childhood obesity issues, and has appeared on stage with such notables as Dr. David Kessler, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, Dr. Marion Nestle, Morgan Spurlock and Chef Ann Cooper. Adamick is a regular guest lecturer at New York University and University of California at Santa Barbara, has presented at The Aspen Institute’s Health Forum and Montefiore Medical Center’s Social Medicine Grand Rounds, and has co-taught a course called “Blueprint for a Green School” at Antioch University NE. She has also been a featured speaker at Alice Waters’ "School Lunch Initiative Roundtable" at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington D.C., and at conferences held by Yale University, the Community Food Security Coalition, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, FoodService Directors Magazine, Field to Plate, Philadelphia’s Food Trust, Chicago’s Healthy Schools Campaign, Westchester and Rockland Coalitions for Better School Food, and The Orfalea Foundations’ Annual Children's Center Directors Retreat.
Adamick is a featured blogger for The Atlantic (www.TheAtlantic.com/food) and has appeared in numerous articles in the New York Times, The New Yorker, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Daily News, and USA Today, about school lunch programs, industrial organics and farm-to-school initiatives. She is also featured in “Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children,” by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes (HarperCollins, 2006) and “Free for All: Fixing School Food in America” by Janet Poppendieck (California Studies in Food & Culture, 2010), has been a guest on PBS’s “To The Contrary,” and appears in the documentary film “Two Angry Moms.” Her frequent essays and podcasts relating to food systems can be found on www.sCoolFood.org.
Adamick currently serves as the principal consultant for the Orfalea Foundation’s s’Cool Food Initiative (www.sCoolFood.org) in California, for the Colorado Health Foundation’s Healthy School Meals Project, and for the Children’s Health Foundation’s Lunch for Life project. She also acted as the Project Director during the inaugural year of the SchoolFood Plus Initiative in New York City. Adamick’s eclectic past includes her careers as a corporate attorney, a professional chef in both white tablecloth restaurants and senior living communities, and a small business owner.
In addition to being a member of Slow Food, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, Chef's Collaborative and NY Farms!, Adamick sat on the National Farm-to-School Executive Advisory Committee and currently sits on the Advisory Boards of Better School Food, the New York Coalition for Healthy School Foods, Aubin Pictures’ “What’s On Your Plate”, and Parent Earth.