Meet Our Team

Emily (Hagel) Paul

Partner

Emily (Hagel) Paul, vice president, has led teams and organizations for over a decade in the non-profit and for-profit food space in addressing the locality and seasonality, as well as cultural, economic, and equity factors of local food systems. Emily works to address the needs of food institutions, non-profit organizations, and individual entrepreneurs as well as the systems in which these stakeholder groups are connected, with deep experience in hunger relief, kitchen operations, and non-profit strategy.

In 2020-2021, Emily served as the contractual director of Minnesota Central Kitchen, a program that brings together a network of commercial food service partners in Minnesota to prepare 2+ million meals for community organizations battling food insecurity exacerbated by the COVID-19 public health emergency, all while keeping culinary staff employed. Prior to joining Food Works Group, Emily was director of programs and strategic partnerships at The Good Acre, a non-profit food hub that supports under-served farmers, food makers, and local institutions in the greater Minneapolis-St. Paul area. She was responsible for curating and managing a teaching kitchen, commercial kitchen facilities, and food business accelerator. She also oversaw culinary training programs for institutions. Prior to The Good Acre, Emily was the director of meals programs and executive chef at Miriam’s Kitchen in Washington, DC. Emily currently serves as board chair of the Mill City Farmers Market Charitable Fund, and previously served as a director of Twin Cities Co-op Partners, a co-op retailer and wholesaler servicing upper Midwest co-ops, restaurants, and major natural foods retailers.

Emily holds a bachelor’s in international relations and a minor in Spanish from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as well as a culinary degree from L’Academie de Cuisine in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Emily lives in Minneapolis, MN.