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www.columbusschoolforgirls.org

Amy Bodiker, Class of 1990Amy believes that CSGs indelible mark on each girl is the clear understanding that each has unique gifts to share. We are given the tools to be independent thinkers, encour-aged to follow our passions, and expected to be leaders.

Amy Bodiker has always loved to cook. Her mother instructed babysitters to bake cookies with her as a young girl. In lower school, she started reading cook-books, something she still loves to do. Her first jobs in high school and college were always in cater-ing businesses, cafs, and restau-rants. From there, Amy found it an easy and authentic leap into non-profits that promote healthy and sustainable food. She never thought her love of food could or would be her real career, but

looking back, she realizes she has always worked in some aspect of the food business.

Though trained as a chef, Amy has spent the bulk of her professional life with nonprofit organizations that promote the connection between good food and improved personal, environmental, and community health. She was the Director of Chefs Collaborative in Boston for five years and served as Development Director at Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture outside NYC from 2006-2009. Today, she lives in Columbus and consults with food and farming organizations around the country, helping them to increase their fundraising potential and build capacity, filling roles such as grant-writer, fundraising project manager, or campaign advisor. Some clients include Philadelphia Fair Food, Franklin Park Conservatory, and the Organic Farming Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, CA. She is also an avid gardener, enthusiastic cooking teacher, and occasional wedding cake maker.

Making her livelihood in the non-profit sector also means that Amy volunteers for many organizations. Last year, she helped to start the Bexley Community Garden and currently serves on the boards of the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association and Chefs Collaborative, a national culinary organization.

Amy believes that CSGs indelible mark on each girl is the clear understanding that each has unique gifts to share. We are given the tools to be independent thinkers, encouraged to fol-low our passions, and expected to be leaders. That said, Amy also points out that CSG did not (and does not) offer her any home-economics or culinary training courses. She adds with a grin, Im fairly certain that the same teachers who instilled the idea in me that I could aspire to any career never really in-tended for me to pursue a life in the domestic arts.

Like many other CSG girls, Amy will never forget creeping up to the attic with Mrs. Sehring to witness the girl banished there for eternity after dumping a bowl of creamed chipped beef on the Headmasters head. There were important lessons in that adventure for Amy: a shared understanding that mis-behaving had serious consequences and also that creamed chipped beef is indeed the grossest food ever!

After CSG, Amy received her B.A. in History and Womens Studies from Connecticut College and a culinary degree from the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. She admits to a slight obsession with Julia Child, and was able to feed this obsession as a culinary student in Childs hometown. Amy has always admired Julias zest and wit and unflappable ap-petite to both learn and teach everything there was to know about food. I want to be just like her when I grow up, Amy says.

As an advocate for a better food system, Amy is thrilled by the heightened awareness and interest in healthy and greener food. But Amy recognizes there is still work to be done. Just because you shop at the farmers market doesnt automati-cally mean you have the skills to transform a rutabaga or a side of beef into something you actually want to eat, Amy explains. She knows plenty of friends who received lovely kitchen equipment as wedding gifts but dont know the first thing about how to use it.

When Amy started to remember that what excites her most about food is the experience - the camaraderie of the kitchen, the creativity of putting a delicious dish together, and the tastes and smells and sounds - she began to shift her business a bit to incorporate more of the basics. In an effort to do more and talk less, she has recently begun to teach some cook-ing classes - at Franklin Park Conservatory and privately. It sounds simple, and on a certain level it is, but a lot of good comes from just getting in the kitchen and cooking more.

Wendell Berry has said, How we eat determines, to a con-siderable extent, how the world is used. This idea is core to Amys work as a teacher and a consultant. We all eat, Amy says, and if were lucky, we do it at least three times a day. Unfortunately, most of the commercially available food isnt as nutritious, environmentally- and socially- responsible, or even as tasty as it could be. Weve been lulled into thinking that food should be fast, convenient, and cheap. This is the same food system that has also brought us record obesity and diabetes rates, dead zones in our waterways, enslaved tomato workers in Florida, and the recent half-billion egg recall.

To Amy, food is more than just fuel - she also sees its deep economic, social, cultural, and historical implications. Right now, good food (sustainably-produced, local, seasonal, fair-trade, organic) is estimated to be at only about 3-5% of the food supply. Amy believes that good food should be a right and not a privilege for everyone, and she works to ensure that consumers have the opportunity and informa-tion to vote with their forks and choose food that is good for themselves, their communities, and their environment.

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