Keynote Panel for 2025 Winter Conference
December 20, 2024
CT NOFA is excited to present a keynote panel of experts and advocates for the 2025 winter conference. This keynote conversation will explore Connecticut’s food systems through a solutions-oriented lens, highlighting the importance of relationships with our environment, our food, and each other. Grounded in grassroots organizing and forward-thinking innovation, this session will offer steps toward the transformations required to build a thriving, equitable, and sustainable food system in Connecticut.
This keynote panel will be comprised of:
Reggy St Fortcolin
Reggy St Fortcolin is the founder of Fridgeport, a mutual aid network launched in May 2021 to improve food access across Connecticut. Operating community refrigerators in Bridgeport, New Haven, and Hartford, Fridgeport supports 150–200 people daily with a “take what you want, leave what you can” model and has distributed over 200 tons of food since its inception. Beyond Fridgeport, Reggy is a founding member of the Liberated Land Coalition, a Black and Brown-led cooperative focused on equitable access to food and land, and is developing the Sovereign Land Trust to amplify underrepresented voices in land stewardship. His recent legislative achievement, HB6854, created the Food and Nutrition Analyst role to combat food insecurity, establish tax incentives for grocery stores to open in food deserts, promote cross-departmental collaboration, and make grant distribution more equitable. Through grassroots initiatives and impactful policy work, Reggy is driving systemic change to ensure communities across Connecticut have access to nutritious food and sustainable opportunities.
Jennifer Rothman
Jennifer is the Executive Director of the Yellow Farmhouse Education Center in Stonington, Connecticut. She has over twenty years of experience building programs for museums, gardens, and farms. Prior to relocating to Mystic, CT, Jennifer was the education director at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. She was also the Vice President of Children’s and Public Education at the New York Botanical Garden, where she worked for nine years, and the education director and interim director of the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo.
Jennifer has degrees in environmental biology and museum studies. She lives in Mystic with her husband and three young children.
Phoebe Godfrey
Dr. Phoebe Godfrey is a Full Professor-in-Residence in Sociology at UConn and her focus is on the intersections of identity, society, and the natural world. She teaches courses on Society and Climate Change, Sustainable Societies, Social Theory, Sociology of Food, Sociology of Education and many others, but in all, her focus is on engaging students in order to help them explore their potentials.
She the co-editor of a two-volume reader – Systemic Crises of Global Climate Change: Intersections of Race, Class and Gender and Emergent Possibilities for Global Sustainability Intersections of Race, Class and Gender. More recently, she is also the co-editor of Global [Im]-Possibilities: Exploring The Paradoxes of Just Sustainabilities and author of Understanding Just Sustianabilities: A Case Study of a Share-Use Kitchen in Connecticut.
She and her wife, Tina Shirshac, are co-founders of the non-profit CLiCK (Commercially Licensed Co-operative Kitchen) in Windham that is an incubator for local food businesses. She considers her teaching and non-profit work as central to her commitment to social and ecological justice.
Recent Posts
Advocacy News: May 2026
The Good News: CT Senator Chris Murphy has introduced a bill (bipartisan and bicameral) to increase funding for Agricultural Management Assistance to $30 million and to expand the eligible uses for these funds to include “soil health improvements, composting, implementing organic farming, and food safety certification in addition to existing authorized uses such as water management structure and soil erosion control.” Let’s thank Senator Murphy for introducing this bill!
The Bad News: The Farm Bill passed the House of Representatives on April 30, despite 320 food, farm, and conservation organizations, including CT NOFA, voicing our opposition to a bill that does not fix SNAP, does not support new and beginning farmers, and does not adequately support conservation programs or organic agriculture. Now it goes to the Senate and we need to urge both of Connecticut’s Senators to reject this Farm Bill.
Our Vision for a Future of Resilient, Plentiful, Healthy and Locally-Grounded Farming and Food
In concluding its annual retreat, the Northeast Organic Farming Association Interstate Council (NOFA IC) reaffirms the values that have grounded our work for 55 years.
Our vision is that every person is able to live their life with healthy food, clean water and air, community, livelihood, dignity, and purpose within the means of our life-giving planet. We seek that vision on every level, from our households and farms to our communities, states, bioregions, nation, and world. For that vision to be fulfilled, every person, no matter their origin or circumstances, must have all their basic human needs met without degrading the air, water, soil, ecosystems, and climate which we have been given and on which we depend for our lives.