Melanie Parker

Melanie relocated with her family to the North Shore of Kauaʻi after many years of working in the farm-to-school movement in Northern California.

In the Bay Area, she managed the Berkeley Unified School District’s pre-K-12 USDA-funded garden and cooking nutrition education program and facilitated curriculum development and collaboration between the garden and cooking instructors and Nutrition Services to support the district’s transition to locally grown produce and scratch-cooked meals. She coordinated the Center for Ecoliteracy’s Food Systems Project, where she supported a Bay Area regional network of farm-to-school programs and led a school-to-farm field studies program for elementary schools. She also managed a parent nutrition education training program for Oakland Unified School District child development centers.

As a nonprofit organizational development consultant, she worked with a wide range of groups to provide strategic planning and restructuring services. Melanie served as the chair of the Hanalei Elementary School Community Council and helped secure funding to support the school’s enrichment and Science/STEM program. As a former apprentice of the UCSC Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, she gained hands-on sustainable gardening and small-scale organic farming experience that she uses at her homestead garden where she manages a small pasture-raised flock of chickens, which provides local egg shares to the community.