Amy Bouska

Amy Bouska is an Urban Conservationist with the Iowa Department of Agriculture’s Land Stewardship-Division of Soil Conservation.  She has nineteen years experience working with soil and water conservation issues.  She is a Certified Professional in Erosion and Sediment Control (CPESC) and Certified Inspector in Sediment and Erosion and Control (CISEC). She has undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Geography and a Master’s of Science in Urban and Regional Planning, all from the University of Iowa. Amy and her husband and four children live in Iowa City.

Mary Crooks

Mary Crooks is a Master Gardener and certified Permaculture Designer. She is in the process of implementing an ecological landscape design in her yard which includes native prairie, food-bearing trees and shrubs, edible ground covers and habitat for wildlife. She recently retired from a career in family life education with Iowa State University Extension. Her passions include gardening, her volunteer work with Backyard Abundance, family and working with organizations that seek to restore the earth to health.

Jason Grimm

As the Food System Planner with Iowa Valley RC&D in Amana, Jason coordinates the Linn-Johnson Local Food Task Force. The Task Force is local and county governments, health authorities, schools, producers, non-profit organizations, food processors and developers who are working to build a sustainable food and agriculture system in the Linn and Johnson corridor.

Local food system planning was Jason’s focus during his undergraduate education at Iowa State in Landscape Architecture & Environmental Studies. In 2008 Jason received an ISU Dept. of Landscape Arch. Barbara King Scholarship and a University Honors Project Grant to fund his senior thesis Food Urbanism that he termed based on his interests in urban planning and urban food systems. His research, how food relates to the organization of a city and how it becomes infrastructure that transforms the urban experience, included research on urban agriculture in London and interviews with officials and local producers in Ames and the surrounding counties. His research awarded him with a 2009 American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) President’s Award for academic excellence, and an ASLA Certificate of Honor.

Today in addition to his food system planning work with the Task Force he reads, writes and gives many presentations about the potential and importance of urban agriculture.  Jason and his wife live in the Iowa City area where they are heavily involved in many other organizations and work heavily with their family's small farm south of Williamsburg.

Liz Maas

Liz Maas is a restoration ecologist and co-owner of Transition Ecology, LLC in Iowa City.  She graduated from the University of Iowa, majoring in Biology and Environmental Science and went on to earn a Masters degree from Iowa in Geoscience (’04). In addition to her consulting work, Liz teaches environmental science as an adjunct instructor at Kirkwood Community College. She is passionate about improving biodiversity and the local food movement. Liz, her husband Ryan, and two daughters are usually found outdoors, with muddy boots and big smiles.

Fred Meyer

Fred Meyer is a certified Permaculture Designer, certified Teacher of Permaculture, Master Gardener, and Master Conservationist. He is the founder and director of Backyard Abundance. Mr. Meyer has organized and presented at numerous events and workshops about creating resilient communities and landscapes at churches, schools, and libraries. He has been experimenting with growing food in sustainable ways since 1995 and has been fascinated with the natural world since childhood.

Roxane Mitten

Roxane Mitten is a Permaculture Designer. She is active in Earth Source Community Gardens in its demonstration and educational components. Inspired by her Permaculture Design Course from Occidental Arts and Ecology Center in 1997, she co-created an intentional community and practiced dryland permaculture in southeast Montana for 3 years, where she also engaged what she thinks of as a transition from "monocrop" livelihood, to one that was a resilient and diversified livilihood through produce growing, beekeeping, massage therapy, restaurant chef, carpentry, pluming and other trades, and other rural activities of the region. From this experience, along with her more urban experience in biomedical and astrophysics research, she brings an multidimentional perspective of life's patterns that melds with permaculture philosophy. She is interested in strategies for urban practices in resiliency. She has always found her deepest sense of interconnectedness experienced while working in nature's settings.

Melissa Sharapova

Melissa Sharapova is a certified Permaculture Designer and certified Teacher of Permaculture. She specializes in designing with perennial plantings and is experimenting with them on her one acre urban homestead. Melissa is also passionate about natural building and is certified in green building and sustainable design from Living Routes, University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has managed greenhouses and founded a five-acre organic homestead in Connecticut. Melissa is committed to mentoring youth in food production and nature connection. She lives and gardens with her three children in Ely, Iowa.