Kate Adamick, JD
Food Systems Solutions, LLC
New York, New York
Phone: 917.628.8911
ChefKate@nyc.rr.com
Kate Adamick, Principal of Food Systems Solutions LLC, is a New York City-based consultant specializing in institutional meal reform, including comprehensive farm-to-cafeteria programs as a way to improve institutional food and aid in developing local and sustainable agriculture systems. She has worked for school districts, hospitals and retirement communities across the United States.
As the Project Director during the inaugural year of the SchoolFood Plus Initiative, Adamick successfully led a multi-tiered, multi-agency effort to improve the eating habits, health and academic performance of New York City’s 1.1 million public schoolchildren by incorporating more locally-grown fruits, vegetables, whole grains and legumes into the school lunch program.
Adamick is experienced in developing collaborative efforts among community members, NGOs and local government agencies, and her work has focused on integrating school-based programming, institutional change, and coalition-building to create the structure necessary to support and reinforce the healthful transformation of the school meals system. Adamick’s eclectic past also includes her careers as a corporate attorney, a professional chef in both fine dining and senior living communities, and a small business owner.
Adamick is a frequent speaker on institutional food systems, sustainable agriculture and childhood obesity issues. She has presented at Montefiore Medical Center’s Social Medicine Grand Rounds, is a regular guest lecturer at both Columbia University and New York University, and co-teaches 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 the Community Food Security Coalition, the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, FoodService Directors Magazine, Philadelphia’s Food Trust, Chicago’s Healthy Schools Campaign, Westchester Coalition for Better School Food, Dutchess County Medical Society, Westchester Dietetic Association and Field to Plate.
In addition to being a member of Slow Food, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, Chef's Collaborative and NY Farms!, Adamick sits on the National Farm-to-School Executive Advisory Committee and on the Advisory Boards of the New York Coalition for Healthy School Foods and the Westchester Coalition for Better School Food.
Adamick was featured in an August 2005 New York Times article on farm-to-school programs, appeared in a September 2006 New Yorker article about school food reform, and her op-ed on industrial organics was published in the San Francisco Chronicle in August 2006. She is also featured in “Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children,” by Ann Cooper and Lisa Holmes (HarperCollins, 2006), has been a guest on PBS’s “To The Contrary,” and appears in the documentary film “Two Angry Moms.” Her frequent essays relating to food systems can be found on www.ChefAnn.com/blog.
Among Adamick’s clients are the Berkeley Unified School District (California), The Orfalea Foundations in Santa Barbara, Katonah-Lewisboro School District (New York), The Manhattan Country School (New York City), the Alexander Dawson School (Las Vegas), St. Vincent’s Hospital (New York), and The Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.