Meet Our Team

Wendy Stuart

Founding Partner

Wendy Stuart, partner, founded Food Works Group over a decade 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 DC Greens as chair for its governance committee and sits on various 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, American Farm Publications, Atlas Obscura, Culinary Institute of America Alumni Magazine, Elevation DC, Hill Rag, Modern Farmer, and other media outlets. Wendy lives in Washington, DC.