Biography

Hank is President & CEO of the Center for Popular Research, Education & Policy (C-PREP), a non-profit community based organization. C-PREP serves vulnerable communities with action research, training and technical assistance and policy development. His work specifically focuses on food justice and building community resilience. In 2014 Hank founded New Hope Farms Cooperative, Inc., a worker-owned cooperative farm. The goal is to link the farm to other small farms that supply a network of cooperatively owned corner stores selling only healthy food in low-income neighborhoods. Previously, he co-founded and managed Dig Deep Farms & Produce, a project of the Alameda County Deputy Sheriffs Activities League. The purpose of this project was to grow and sell healthy, affordable local food to residents of vulnerable communities in the East Bay; to create sustainable, living wage jobs for community residents; and to develop the social, community and economic benefits of a local food enterprise network. For three years he carried out action research for the Food Dignity Project, a five-year study of how five communities in the US build sustainable community food systems to reduce food insecurity, funded by the Agriculture Food and Research Initiative of the USDA. Hank is a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar and a Kellogg National Fellow. He practiced psychiatry long enough. He plays the alto saxophone; writes poetry and makes photographs. He lives near his farm in Pinole, California.