Exploring the Health of our Modern Food System

Megan Watkins has spent more than two decades championing vulnerable populations. She brings valuable strategy, management, and philanthropy experience to her role, and a personal commitment to farm animal protection — having dedicated nine years to Farm Sanctuary’s board of directors.

Megan previously served as Managing Director and National Practice Executive in the Philanthropic Solutions group at U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management. She advised individual, corporate, and family-wealth clients of U.S. Trust and Merrill Lynch on philanthropic management and strategy for more than 10 years. Megan grew a robust philanthropic advisory practice, helping clients articulate their philanthropic vision and implementing programs that resulted in gifts of hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable work.

Before joining U.S. Trust, Megan was a vice president in the Philanthropic Services Group at J.P. Morgan Private Bank, where she managed a client and grant portfolio focused on animal welfare and protection, community development, and human services. Megan developed a variety of funding initiatives and conducted organizational assessments of hundreds of nonprofit organizations working on behalf of companion animals, threatened and endangered species, at-risk youth, survivors of domestic violence, and the homeless. Her experience also includes international and domestic program development and policy work in the nonprofit sector.

Megan is a graduate of Barnard College and holds a Master of International Affairs degree, with a specialization in economic and political development, from Columbia University.

Miko Brown has been working with nonprofit and governmental organizations over the past decade to help foster a more just and compassionate world in partnership with individuals and communities throughout the United States. She has been described as someone who is “smart with heart”—easily able to problem-solve and make meaningful connections with humble wisdom, deep insight, warmth, and compassion. Miko received her Master’s Degree in Social Change and is passionate about healing, justice, collective care, self-love in action, and committing to liberatory practices for the benefit of all beings and our planet. 

She’s currently Farm Sanctuary’s Manager of Social Justice Programs where she works to develop social justice programming to support critical thinking about the ideas and history underlying the dysfunction of our modern food system and culture and where she helps to facilitate organizational social justice and equity initiatives.  She also previously worked as Farm Sanctuary’s Intern Program Coordinator and, later, as the Los Angeles Area Humane Educator where she established a new Southern California in-classroom program, Meet the Animals: A Virtual Tour of Farm Sanctuary. She has contributed writing to the anthology Veganism of Color: Decentering Whiteness in Human and Nonhuman Liberation edited by Julia Feliz and the story of her work is featured in the book A Better World Starts Here: Activists and Their Work by Stacy Russo.

Amanda Hitt is the Director of Government Accountability Project’s Food Integrity Campaign (FIC). She oversees their operations and is responsible for ensuring that the Food Integrity Campaign fulfills its mission of enhancing food integrity by facilitating truth-telling. To do this, Amanda works closely with partner organizations, clients, legislators, and the media to alter the balance of power between the food industry and consumers. She acts to protect the rights of those who speak out against the practices that compromise food integrity, and to empower whistleblowers and food activists. Amanda has a background in both law and public health.

Sindy Benavides is a Honduran-American immigrant who has experienced the American dream, and now devotes her career to public service, ensuring that countless young people, women, and immigrants have the same opportunity. She is currently Chief Executive Officer for the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the oldest Hispanic civil rights organization in the country. She previously served as LULAC’s Chief Operating Officer and National Director for Civic Engagement and Community Mobilization. Sindy received her Bachelor of Arts from Virginia State University in Petersburg, Virginia, where she graduated Valedictorian of her class and studied Political Science with a minor in Spanish. She has also attended American University for her Master’s degree in International Affairs. 

Larry Baldwin became the Crystal Coast Waterkeeper in 2016. He had previously been the Lower Neuse Riverkeeper, located in New Bern, NC, where the issue of CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation) pollution was very evident in the Neuse River watershed as well as other bodies of water in eastern North Carolina.  During that time, he began working with local environmental justice organizations and the communities they serve to stop the negative impacts that the swine and poultry industry was, and continues to have on the water, air and families who live in the vicinity of these operations. As the Crystal Coast Waterkeeper, Larry continues his work with the environmental justice communities and the North Carolina Riverkeepers to oppose the oppressive CAFO industry. His work focuses on protecting the beautiful coast and watersheds of North Carolina and educating the public about the impacts that CAFOs are having on the entire state.  

Gerardo Reyes Chávez is a senior staff member with the award-winning human rights organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).  Mr. Reyes is a farmworker and has worked in the fields since age 11, first as a peasant farmer in Mexico and then in the fields of Florida picking oranges, tomatoes, blueberries, and watermelon.  Mr. Reyes has worked with consumer allies to organize national actions in the Campaign for Fair Food.  As part of the implementation of the Fair Food Program, Mr. Reyes conducts workers’ rights education with thousands of farmworkers on participating tomato farms. Mr. Reyes speaks regularly about the Fair Food Program at events across the country.