Morgan Maki

Chief Operating Officer

Morgan plays a vital role on our senior leadership team. He oversees project operations and supports business development. Passionate about building food and farm businesses that connect land use and environmental impact— Morgan evaluates community health and equity opportunities for our different projects. A teacher and mentor at heart, Morgan also works closely with our team, investors, and project leadership on strategic planning, asset management, and interpersonal development.

Previously, Morgan developed food and retail strategies for Larimer Square and Urban Villages in Denver, Redfield Cider Bar in Oakland, Josey Baker Bread in San Francisco, SHED in Healdsburg, and RailSpur in Seattle. Before that, Morgan served as a member of the operations team for the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses in San Francisco, and helped found the non-profit cooking school 18 Reasons. He also collaborated to develop category criteria with the Good Food Awards and served as a category judge. Morgan attended the New England Culinary Institute and spent many years managing and working fine dining and Michelin-starred restaurant kitchens. His voice, recipes, and writing have been featured in the Primal Cuts: Cooking with America's Best Butchers, SF Weekly, the Good Food Jobs blog, Phaidon, Meatpaper Magazine, KQED, Bi-Rite Market’s Eat Good Food and more.

 
 

Recent recent Articles by morgan

Featured
Welcoming A New Year
Welcoming A New Year

As we reflect on 2023, we would like to share a few words of gratitude for you all, our community. 

Read More →
We did a lot in 2022
We did a lot in 2022

We are grateful for this work, for our team, and the communities and landscapes that we spend time with. Here is to all of the learnings and questions that lay ahead in this year of 2023.

Read More →
2021 Year in Review
2021 Year in Review

In our work we are met with failures and successes, sometime in the same project in the same week. We celebrate our success! And we are constantly learning from our missed steps and failures. And forever, we have a lot to learn. Here is to both celebrating 2021 and looking forward to 2022 and the commitment to continued learning, work and growth.

Read More →
2020 Year in Review
2020 Year in Review

We launched into 2020 with a clear strategic plan and vision for what this year would entail. Yet, just a month or so into that plan, the world changed around as we entered into a global pandemic. As the Buddhist teacher and author Pema Chödrön writes, “sometimes when things fall apart, well, that's the big opportunity to change.” And that has been our mantra for this year.

Read More →
Looking to Indigenous Lands and Food Pathways
Looking to Indigenous Lands and Food Pathways

Land is where our work begins. As a team, we often share this sentiment as a way of creating context and structuring our engagement with farms, businesses and landscapes. A core tenant of our work lies in understanding the landscape that we are working in, what it is capable of producing and what it wants to be in its natural state.

Read More →