Join Slow Food NYC’s annual Food Almanac event! Our panel of passionate advocates are contributing to food policy changes for the benefit of all. Learn about the 2025 Farm Bill and Slow Food NYC and Slow Food USA’s involvement in shaping it!
Get your ticket here! The event is free and the suggested donation is $15 to support good, clean, and fair food.
Speaker Bios:
Brian Solem (he/him) serves as the director of communications and advocacy for Slow Food USA, which means he oversees all digital channels, marketing/PR, storytelling and grassroots mobilization efforts for the national movement. He has spent the last 15 years as a nonprofit marketing and communications leader, most recently as the senior director of communications for AIDS Foundation Chicago and the communications co-chair of Getting to Zero Illinois. Food studies and food justice work have been core elements of Brian's life over the last decade: He is the co-founder of food literary journal Graze, a former board member and board vice president of Chicago's Dill Pickle Food Co-op, and a cofounder of Portage Park Mutual Aid, a mutual exchange network in his neighborhood in Chicago. Brian enjoys connecting with community, gardening and cooking, and spending time with his husband and daughter.
Tyler Edwards is a Grassroots Advocacy Coordinator at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, an alliance of family farm, food, conservation, rural, and urban organizations that take common positions on policy issues. As part of the coalition's DC-based team, she crafts strategy, tools, and messaging that coalition members use to mobilize their grassroots base at key moments to ensure that influential pieces of legislation, like the Farm Bill, protect small, sustainable, BIPOC, and underserved farmers. Drawing on her past in theater and science communication, Tyler integrates a sense of creativity and a deep love for storytelling into her work.
Monti Lawson is the Founder and Lead Land Steward of Catalyst Collaborative Farm and Site Steward of WILDSEED Community Farm & Healing Village. He is a Black and Gay beginning farmer who has been a community gardener and urban farmer in NYC for over a decade. He graduated from Farm School NYC and is an active member of the FSNYC alumni community. He is also a member of Black Farmer's United of NYS, Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, and NYS BIPOC Grower Support Network. In 2023, he was honored to serve as the inaugural representative for Manhattan and Staten Island on the USDA Farm Service Urban County Committee for New York City.