About The Common Market: Board

• Suku John (Board Member) - Suku is the Executive Director of the East Park Revitalization Alliance. Originally from India, he holds a PhD in Geology with a focus on Climate Change, and spent a decade working in academia. Suku’s passion is to use his skills and knowledge to empower vulnerable communities to affect change in their own environments. Over the past 15 years, he has worked with a number of grass-roots environmental organizations around the world, including New Orleans, Haiti, India, Nepal and West Philadelphia.

• Haile Johnston (Board Co-Chair) - Haile is the Pennsylvania State Director for the Center for Progressive Leadership. He is passionate about providing access to healthy local foods to residents of low-income communities in Philadelphia. Haile formerly worked as the Environmental Interventions Coordinator for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health’s Division of Chronic Disease Prevention. In this capacity, he was instrumental in crafting the Health Department’s testimony on the dangers of trans fat consumption before City Council which ultimately banned their use in Philadelphia restaurants. Haile is a graduate of the Wharton School with a concentration in Entrepreneurial Management.

• Nancy Lanham (Board Member) - Nancy is the recent past Executive Director of the Delaware Valley Grantmakers where she provided high quality programs and services for over 150 grantmaking organizations. With an MBA from the University of Chicago, Nancy is a results oriented marketing executive with diverse experience in technology, production and management. She has demonstrated abilities in problem solving, organizing and implementing profitable business or focused non-profit strategies.

• Bob Pierson (Board Secretary) - Bob is the founder and president of Farm to City, a small business that operates buying clubs, a CSA support service and farmers’ markets in the Philadelphia area and is responsible for catalyzing over $1.6 million annually in sales by local farmers in 2008. Farm to City has also developed a web-based ordering platform and inventory management tool for its local seasonal buying club called "Winter Harvest." Bob is the Agricultural Development Educator at Penn State Cooperative Extension. In this capacity, he creates educational opportunities to help develop urban farmers in Philadelphia.

• Christina (Tina) Rodriguez (Board Treasurer) is the Chief Financial Officer & General Counsel and a co-founder of SAGE Dining Services, Inc., the nation’s leading provider of gourmet dining services for independent schools. Founded in 1990, SAGE’s mission is to provide high quality, freshly prepared meals to students, using local and sustainable products wherever possible, to help students develop an awareness and appreciation for the foods they eat. Tina served as an Adjunct Faculty member at Johns Hopkins University for over 15 years, teaching a variety of courses on Strategic Planning and Management to MBA candidates. She also taught at the University of Maryland School of Business, and currently teaches Finance at The College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Prior to her work at SAGE, Tina was a Manager at Bain & Company, an international strategy consulting firm. She holds degrees from the Wharton School of Finance and Harvard Law School.