Meg Glasser is the Managing Director of Food Forward, Southern California’s largest harverst-for-the-hungry non-profit organization, which over the last three years has become a regional leader around food justice and access, and has been featured in LA Times, GOOD, KCRW, LA Weekly, LAist, The Huffington Post, Edible Westside, and Tasting Table. By Dec 2012, Food Forward will have gleaned over 1.3 million pounds of fresh produce for Southern California’s food-insecure.
As Managing Director and the first employee at Food Forward, Meg has helped bring what was an all-volunteer run group into a thriving organization that employs 6 people, works in four counties and serves over three quarters of a million people annually. At Food Forward, Meg oversees the backyard gleaning program which conducts 20 – 25 volunteer powered “picks” a month with all fresh produce going to local agencies serving Southern California’s food-insecure.
In August 2012, Meg helped launch the Farmers Market Recovery Program which collects unsold produce from vendors at three local farmers markets, averaging 14,000 pounds of rescued fresh produce each month all going to local agencies serving our community. She also manages and curates the social enterprise and profit generating program CAN IT!, which produces preserved food products for sale to the general public and provides ticketed educational opportunities in food preservation.
Meg is an LA Master Food Preserver and Master Gardener and is part of the LA Food Policy Task Force. She sat on the advisory board for LA Regional Food Hub Development Committee and was a US Delegate for the International Slow Food conference in 2010.
