Wendy Stuart, partner, founded Food Works Group over 15 years ago to support food ecosystems and their potential to have deep, long-term impact on two of the most critical issues of our time, poverty and the changing climate. To this end, Wendy leads FWG’s strategy for solving regional food system challenges, pairing data-driven assessments with deep stakeholder engagement and creative and thoughtful analyses. She directs Food Works Group projects, manages client and partner relationships, and oversees her team of industry experts. 

Wendy is trained as an economist, chef, and food systems specialist. For more than two decades, she has worked with businesses, non-profit, and public-sector clients to strategically realize their vision, expand their reach, and maximize impact and revenue. She focuses on projects that address systems-level issues, informed by industry best practices as well as new, innovative strategies. Areas of expertise include planning and developing food processing operations, regional aggregation and supply chains, food hub networks, food banking, food policy councils, and infrastructure for emerging food ecosystems. Equitable food access and security, environmental and economic stewardship, and restorative farming practices underpin her and her team’s work.

Wendy is also founder of Wide Net Project, a non-profit organization restoring ecological balance to the Chesapeake Bay while supporting hunger relief. Wide Net Project procures high-quality, traceable seafood from the Chesapeake Bay and donates it to hunger-relief agencies and under-resourced communities across the mid-Atlantic and nationally. 

Wendy holds an undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, master’s degrees in Economics and Sustainable Food Systems and a degree from Culinary Institute of America. She serves on the board of directors of North American Food Systems Network. She previously served on the board of DC Greens as chair for its governance committee, and served as a board member of Common Grain Alliance. She also sits on several advisory committees and working groups that address regional food systems, food access, racial equity, regional agriculture, fisheries, urban planning, and transportation issues. Read about her work in the Washington Post here and here. Her work has also been featured in Civil Eats, Atlas Obscura, Culinary Institute of America Alumni Magazine, Elevation DC, Hill Rag, Modern Farmer, and other media outlets. Wendy lives in Washington, DC. 

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.