Food Policy Center Staff - NYC Food Policy Center (Hunter College)

Mark Chatarpal, PhD, Executive Director

Dr. Mark Chatarpal is the Executive Director of Hunter College’s NYC Food Policy Center, where he leads efforts to develop intersectoral, innovative, and evidence-based solutions to prevent diet-related diseases and promote food security in New York City and other urban centers. He is a Food Anthropologist and holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Indiana University Bloomington, an M.A. in Anthropology, and a B.A. (Hons) specializing in Caribbean Studies. He also serves as a Doctoral Lecturer within Hunter College’s Department of Nutrition and Public Health. He previously served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vassar College, teaching courses on Food Anthropology, Environmental Anthropology, Food and Indigeneity, and Research Methods. He also served as an Adjunct Lecturer at the NYU Food Studies Program, where he taught advanced graduate seminars on Inequality and Food Systems, and finally as an Adjunct Lecturer at The Culinary Institute of America, teaching courses on the Anthropology of Food and Introduction to Gastronomy. He continues to advance collective discussions on food pedagogy and enjoys mentoring diverse students and practitioners dedicated to transforming the global food system.

Dr. Chatarpal’s research spans multiple countries, including Guyana, Belize, and Ghana, where he has examined critical issues, including food sovereignty, Indigenous land rights, agricultural livelihoods, and the conceptualization of “food security” when formulating national food policy geared towards Indigenous communities. His dissertation is titled: What Do You Mean by Food Security? The Politics of Agrarian Policymaking in the Caribbean Community. Dr. Chatarpal’s scholarship has been supported by numerous competitive fellowships and grants, such as the Journal of Peasant Studies International Writeshop Fellowship, the IU Food Institute Graduate Research Fellowship, the David C. Skomp Feasibility Fellowship, and the Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship. His work has received various honors, such as the Frederick I. Case Book Prize for scholarly excellence in Caribbean Studies from the University of Toronto, the Harold K. Schneider Prize for best paper in Economic Anthropology from Indiana University, and acknowledgment for his research from the National Toshaos Council (NTC), Guyana’s leading indigenous organization.

His applied anthropological work includes three years of collaborative research with the NTC, focusing on redefining the term “agriculture” in the 2006 Amerindian Act to align with Articles 18, 20, and 23 of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. He also served as a Food Policy Specialist for the Forest Peoples Programme, where he identified constitutional and policy provisions to strengthen and protect Indigenous food systems and land tenure claims for three Indigenous institutions in Guyana. Beyond academia, Dr. Chatarpal has extensive experience as a consultant and advisor for international development organizations. He is on the roster of experts of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, as a Social Inclusion, Indigenous Peoples, and Land Tenure Specialist. Additionally, he served as a Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor for the U.S. Department of State, providing strategic guidance on complex foreign assistance programs worldwide, developing evaluation frameworks, and training stakeholders to enhance program effectiveness and accountability. Through his combined roles as a food scholar, educator, and practitioner, Dr. Chatarpal brings a distinctive, evidence-based perspective to advancing food justice and policy innovation.

Melissa Cantrell, Post-Masters Research Fellow

Melissa Cantrell is a researcher whose work examines the intersection of punishment, political responsibility, and food governance within carceral systems. After working in Democratic politics, including building media research infrastructure for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, she shifted toward criminal justice reform. She attended the Culinary Institute of America, where she decided to combine her love of food with her growing commitment to reforming prison food systems. Melissa completed her MSc in Criminal Justice Policy at the London School of Economics, where she developed a comparative political economy framework to analyse prison food systems in the United States and Scandinavia. Her dissertation combined documentary analysis, cross-national policy comparison, and qualitative analysis to investigate how governance structures, welfare regimes, and privatization shape nutritional standards, daily food practices, and the moral authority of penal institutions. Melissa is currently a Research Fellow at the New York City Food Policy Center, where she writes about prison food systems and the effects of privatization on carceral environments.

Angelina Montez, Food Distribution and Community Outreach Coordinator

Angelina Montez is a food justice communicator focused on access to local, nutritious, and culturally significant foods. She believes that education and direct resource distribution are necessary to mending the gap between food production and consumers. Over the past five years she has worked closely with NY farmers to help connect them to their customers and educate the Lower East Side and NYC at large about the importance of local food systems.

Jaden Schapiro, BA, Senior Writer and Researcher

Jaden Schapiro is a writer from New York. They earned their B.A. from Vassar College in Creative Writing and Art History, while also studying food anthropology. Their background is in multidisciplinary arts programs, having worked at artist and culinary residencies before joining the Food Policy Center. Their most recent project was a reconstruction of Italian Renaissance cuisine and banquet culture to discuss the origins of capitalist cuisine.

Haley Schusterman, MA, Senior Policy Writer and Researcher

Haley is a Senior Policy Writer and Researcher at the NYC Food Policy Center, where she conducts research and develops editorial content to advance equitable and sustainable urban food systems. She holds an MA in Food Studies, with a specialization in policy and advocacy, from New York University. Her professional experience includes serving as a Policy Fellow at the Manhattan Borough President’s Office, where she did research and analysis to help shape strategy on food, infrastructure, transportation and resilience policies. Prior to that, she served as the National Advocacy Fellow at Swipe Out Hunger, where she built grassroots coalitions to advocate for state-level legislation aimed at reducing food insecurity on college campuses. This advocacy work drew from her experiences providing direct services to clients at USC’s student food pantry and the Food Bank for New York City’s Community Kitchen & Pantry of West Harlem. Her writing has appeared in publications including the Philadelphia Inquirer and City Limits, and she is currently writing and illustrating a book about American food policy.

INTERNS

Len Guzman

Len Guzman is an interdisciplinary writer and researcher, with his work focusing on Black, Indigenous, and Caribbean foodways, folklore, music, and language. His background includes independent ethnography in New Orleans examining street performance and the human impact of the jurisdiction of sound, researching the musical connection of the Black Atlantic through New York City, the relationship between Black meat abstention and the reclamation of autonomy, and the work of Yamaye Taino food sovereignty activists. Len is currently a BA student at Vassar College majoring in music and anthropology and intends to pursue higher learning in ethnomusicology post-graduate studies.

Nora Beer

Nora Beer is a senior Anthropology and Food Studies undergraduate at Bennington College, graduating this May. Her focus is on food insecurity, political economy, and ethnographic research methods. Her work examines how systems of hunger relief—particularly food banks and pantries—have evolved within broader structures of inequality in the United States. She has conducted research through the University of Vermont’s Institute for Agroecology, the Vermont Foodbank, and Bennington’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action. Through combining fieldwork, archival research, and policy analysis Nora’s work explores the intersections of agriculture, environment, and social welfare. Nora’s senior thesis in Anthropology traces the history of the American food bank as a case study in the institutionalization of food charity. Nora is from Brooklyn, New York, and has spent the majority of her life thinking about food. As a pastor’s daughter Nora has worked in food charity programs since childhood, including, church soup kitchen models, mobile soup kitchens delivering to welfare hotels and train stations, and community food pantries in Brooklyn, Long Island, and Vermont. Other than food charity spaces, Nora’s favorite place to spend her time is the kitchen. She loves to cook, bake, and try new foods whenever and wherever she can.

CONSULTANTS

Alexina Cather, MPH

Alexina Cather is the Director of Policy and Special Projects at Wellness in the Schools, a national nonprofit that teaches public school students healthy habits to learn, live, and thrive. She is also the Deputy Chair and a Founding Member of the Board of Advisors at the Center for Food as Medicine, where she works to increase equity and access to food as medicine treatments, programs, and interventions. Before her current role, she was the Director of Policy Advocacy and Sustainability at the James Beard Foundation, where she led the foundation’s efforts towards food system change.

For six years, she was the Deputy Director at the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center, where she worked to develop innovative, evidence-based solutions to prevent diet-related diseases and protect food security. Throughout her career, she has worked closely with policy makers, community organizations, advocates, and the public to increase access to more nutritious foods and to create healthier, more sustainable food environments.

Alexina currently serves on the advisory boards of the NYC Healthy School Food Alliance, the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center, and the Weill Cornell Community Advisory Board, and is a Steering Committee Member and Co-Chair of the Healthy Eating and Active Living Action Team at the New York State Cancer Consortium. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in Integrative Biology and holds a Master of Public Health from the University of San Francisco. Alexina was the Lead Co-Chair for New York City Mayor-Elect Eric Adams’ food policy transition team.

Her passion for connecting all people, and especially children, with real, healthy food is inspired and powered daily by her three sons. Prior to her career in food systems, she was a semi-professional soccer player in the Women’s Premier Soccer League and worked as a science teacher in a school program at a children’s hospital.

Collective Justice

Collective Justice’s mission is to leverage their knowledge, skills, and experience to support clients in building capacity and sustainability in their good work. Their methods and values prioritize the voices of the most affected and the aims of their clients by creating effective, meaningful, and sustainable practices. The team brings decades of experience in organizational development and culture change, leadership coaching and management, operations and impact evaluation, storytelling and communications, and facilitation and training to groups, institutions, and governments internationally, nationally, and regionally.