Board President | LaToya Drake | Barren County
LaToya Drake is an educator and health equity advocate with a strong background in nutrition education, food systems, and community engagement. She has spent nearly a decade with the University of Kentucky, where her work spanned food access initiatives, early childhood education support, and community-based outreach efforts that strengthened families across the state.
LaToya holds degrees in sociology and integrative nutrition, grounding her work in both social understanding and practical application. She is passionate about using education, storytelling, and partnership-building to create healthier, more resilient communities. Guided by her belief in lifelong learning and equity for all, she continues to support efforts that uplift Kentucky families and expand opportunities for well-being across the Commonwealth.
Vice President | Ashton Potter | Fayette County
Ashton Potter has worked in public health and local food systems development for the past 15 years. She started her career at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta working on foodborne disease outbreak detection and response and later working to develop best practices for physical activity and nutrition for childcare centers as a part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Child Care initiative.
Ashton launched and currently manages the Bluegrass Farm to Table for the City of Lexington where she works to cultivate new market opportunities for Kentucky farmers and on collaborative projects that increase access to and affordability of Kentucky farm food. Ashton is a Lexington native and holds a Doctor of Public Health (DrPH) degree from the University of Kentucky College of Public Health.
Treasurer | Kurt Mason | Scott County
Kurt retired from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service serving as the Urban Conservationist for the State of Kentucky and a former District Conservationist with career work that served in the Eastern Kentucky Coalfield and Outer Bluegrass physiographic regions. With 40 years of providing natural resource management assistance in the Louisville area, Kurt maintained a focus on watershed management issues affecting all land users and connecting people and communities with opportunities to address natural resource issues on agricultural, suburban and urban landscapes.
Kurt continues to provide leadership to land based organizations including chairing the Louisville/Jefferson County Environmental Trust Oversight Board and Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest Board of Trustees. He also serves as vice-chair of the Food Literacy Project Board and New Directions Housing Corporation Board.
Kurt is a Georgetown, Kentucky native and is owner of a small family farm. He holds an undergraduate degree in agriculture from Morehead State University and graduate degrees from the University of Louisville in Urban Planning and Design and Public Administration. He is a Certified Professional Erosion and Sediment Control Specialist and continues to work as an agricultural land use consultant.
Secretary | Christine Smith | Fayette County
Maggie Mosley | Scott County
Maggie Mosley serves as the Communications Director for Sustainable Agriculture Food System Funders (SAFSF), a national network connecting philanthropy, agriculture, and food systems. Her role supports and touches each piece of SAFSF’s work and is key to celebrating power and impact. She oversees and manages all external communications, develops and maintains media relationships, and provides insights on organizational communications strategies and approaches.
Maggie holds a B.S. in Agriculture & Natural Resources from Berea College. Her background is in story-based communications strategy, grassroots fundraising, and community food system assessments. Prior to her time at SAFSF, she was a part of Community Farm Alliance’s staff for 5 years. Her position focused on implementing and executing a story-based communications strategy. She led 5 Community Food System Assessments across Appalachian Kentucky and managed the Breaking Beans: Food and Farm Story Project. She also participated in several regional networks, like What’s Next EKY and the Central Appalachian Network. Her time working in Appalachia deepened her passion for local and grew her understanding of the regional food systems that weave her home together.
Maggie grew up on a tobacco farm in Bethel, Kentucky. She comes from a long line of farmers, gardeners, and cooks. They passed down to her their love for the land, their passion for people, and their way of connecting the two through food. She currently resides in Georgetown, Kentucky with her husband, kids, and dogs. In her free time, she enjoys trying new recipes, gardening, journaling, and traveling.
Jann Knappage | Menifee County
Jann co-owns Fox & Hen Farm in Menifee County, co-founded and directs the Red River Gorge Farmers Market and works as The Food Connection’s EKY Value Chain Coordinator. Jann is not new to CFA, because she was formerly both an employee and board member during a previous term. Local food and farming is central in her life and is excited to serve on CFA’s board again and support the programming and policy the staff is working tirelessly on everyday.
Alice Melendez | Bourbon County
Alice was born in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains between Winchester and Clay City. She grew up on a farm, went to small town schools, learned to drive on winding country roads with lots of blind spots. She studied Geography at Dartmouth College, the way that economies and other social agreements interplay with local environments. She worked as a delivery driver and at a refugee resettlement agency, ran a handyman business. Today she raises a son and daughter who are 15 and 16 years old, growing up in Paris. After considering that ‘the climate movement’ might generate political will for a massive transformation in the way that humans relate to the natural world, she worked on that. Today though her instinct is that it’s time to focus on regenerative agriculture in our Ohio River Valley to ride through whatever comes our way. To that end she helps Mt. Folly Enterprises run a USDA grant backing the launch of a new regional beef brand, and works at Kentucky Department of Agriculture in Food Distribution supporting our food banks and the people who depend on them.
Birch Bragg | Franklin County
Birch Bragg is Co-Owner and Operator of Locals Food Hub & Pizza Pub in Frankfort, KY. Opened in the July of 2021, Locals is dedicated to increasing access to locally produced foods for all members of the community and to increasing local food producers’ access to consistent and viable markets for their goods. Birch and his wife Michelle also established Nature Friendly Farms in north Franklin County they now call home, alongside their two children Iris and Cedar. He has worked closely with the West Sixth Brewing owners and team to create the agri-tourism destination that it is today.
Birch has also served as a state board member for the Hop Growers Alliance of Kentucky and served as the board president for the Friends of the Franklin County Farmers Market for two years. Currently, he sits on the Frankfort Area Chamber of Commerce Government Affairs Committee and the Franklin County Tourist Commission Board of Directors and spends much of his time planning for the Summer 2024 opening of Locals second location in the Smoketown neighborhood of Louisville.
Having grown up on a small farm in Metcalfe County, Kentucky, Birch is dedicated to the revitalization of our rural and urban agrarian communities and has made the goal of pushing local food forward into the mainstream his life’s work since 2013. He firmly believes that a robust local food economy is the answer to so many of the challenges we face today as a society.
“(I believe) We must come together and focus our political and financial resources on rebuilding the infrastructure for our local food systems to once again thrive. We must, with urgency, drive the creation of policy that directly supports our local food farming families and, more specifically, drive demand for their products, all while increasing access to local food for all members of our society. By doing this, we can revitalize the health of our people, restore the health of our land, rebuild the strength of our local agrarian economies and revitalize the rural and urban communities that are the backbone of this Commonwealth we call home.”
Grace Mican | Jefferson County
Grace Mican is the Director of Programs with The Food Literacy Project (FLP). She has been working with FLP in farm-based youth development since 2017. She also grows vegetables at home with her partner in their “Front Yard Farm.”
She graduated from Bellarmine University with a B.A. in Environmental Studies and minors in Anthropology, Spanish, and International Studies.
Grace loves to teach and take dance classes, make veggie burgers from scratch, travel, speak Spanish, and work alongside teens on the farm. She engages in community-led efforts toward building justice, equity, and sustainability within the local food systems of her hometown, Louisville.
Michael Andrews | Todd County
Michael J. Andrews was born and raised on his family’s farm in Guthrie, KY. After graduating from Todd County Central High School in 1975, he attended Murray State University. While attending college, he worked as a Soil Conservationist Trainee for the Todd County office during the summers along with raising tobacco and row crops to pay for his college education. He received his BS degree in agriculture in 1975 from MSU.
After graduation, Michael started his career with the USDA-NRCS as a Soil Conservationist. He worked in several counties in western Kentucky before becoming the District Conservationist in Webster County in 1983. While in Webster County, Michael also coached basketball, football, and softball for the local high school. He was also the land judging coach for the FFA program. He retired in 2017 as a Resource Conservation Manager of a four-county area.
Michael is still an active farmer. His hobbies include fishing and hunting. He continues to enjoy coaching baseball. He is co-owner of a food truck where he enjoys cooking fish. He is an active member of his church where he serves as treasurer and a trustee. Michael has been married to Monica Glass-Andrews for 25 years. He has two children, Bridget and Deandre (Sharlene), and three grandchildren.