The Alaska Food Policy is growing! Along with hiring our first-ever Executive Director at the beginning of the year, we've recently welcomed three new members to our governing board. With new skills, interests, and talents, AFPC increases its capacity to support a stronger, more resilient food system for all Alaskans. Welcome to the team!!
Ronalda Angason
Alaska Village Initiatives Agriculture Program Director, has fifteen years’ experience in program management, project development, human resources and grant administration. She has a broad skill-set having worked in the fisheries industry, for various Alaska Native Corporations and other nonprofits organizations. She has grown a tribal community garden from funding to harvest.
She is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman, and fishes in the summer aboard the family drift boat. As a major part of running a successful commercial fishing operation, she assures all accounting, planning purchases, and maintenance is conducted on schedule.
Ronalda is of Sugpiaq and Athabaskan descent from Bristol Bay and the Yukon. Her maternal grandparents were Nik and Mary Shanigan of Bristol Bay. Her paternal grandparents were Hans and Johanna Rude of Flat/Anvik, Alaska.
Evie Witten
Evie Witten brings the AFPC board her diverse background in land conservation, local foods business, regenerative agriculture, commercial fisheries, and subsistence research in Alaska. She founded Evie’s Brinery, a sauerkraut and kimchi business, with the mission to partner with local farms and expand the way we think about, enjoy and preserve our Alaska Grown vegetables throughout the year.
Heidi Rader
Associate professor of Extension at University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Heidi Rader promotes health, wellness and self-sufficiency through education on local foods and agriculture. She teaches webinars on these topics and offers the Alaska Master Gardener Online course. She provides hands-on workshops in the Tanana Chiefs Conference region. Rader created the Grow&Tell mobile app, writes monthly news columns and films YouTube videos. She also directs the vegetable variety trials in Fairbanks.
Robbi Mixon
Robbi has managed the Homer Farmers Market for the past decade. Her tenure includes the adoption of the market coin program and SNAP benefits program and other initiatives at the Market that have improved the access to local food as well as the advancement of basic infrastructure at the Market. As the Local Foods Director for regional environmental conservation organization Cook Inletkeeper, she directs the Alaska Food Hub, & the Alaska Farmers Market Association. Robbi served as an AFPC board member for two years before taking on the role of Executive Director. She lives in Homer, Alaska with her husband, a chef at Two Sisters, a local bakery, dedicated to using as many locally sourced ingredients as possible. They raise a variety of birds, pigs, and vegetables, on their micro-farm, Monkey Hollow.
