Alexa (Lexi) Van de Walle is a food advocate and writer/nutrition counselor/ chef/marketer based in Manhattan and Southampton, NY. She has a MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, attended the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and Peter Kump’s Cooking School where she received nutrition counseling and chef certifications. Her blog, www.lightheartedlocvore.com, is about local food on Long Island and Manhattan and where she writes about and photographs farms and farmers markets, fishermen and their catch, hunters and their game, restaurants and artisan food makers that cook with local food, and the impact of policy on the New York region. Van de Walle also shares her own recipes and tales of woe from her fledgling vegetable garden. Lighthearted Locavore is featured on The New York Times Cityroom Blogroll and Magellan Press’ Where the Locals Eat in the Best Food Blogs section. She is a contributor to Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, and has been a guest speaker at the Slow Food Eat End Eat-in, University of Vermont Honor College – Food Systems Symposium, Politics of Food Conference at Columbia University, Institute for Integrative Nutrition and The New School’s Food Studies Program where she’s presented on the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act and local procurement, the challenges that nutrition educators have competing with consumer packaged goods marketing to children, regional food systems, and the contradictions between the USDA’s farm subsidies and its guidelines in the food pyramid. She is an active player in local and global food advocacy including working on the NYC host committee to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, Food Systems Network NYC strategy and communications committees, Just Food’s advisory council, and the Manhattan Borough President’s Office food charter. And, she is a co-sponsor of the NYC Food and Climate Change Summit. In the Spring of 2010, Van de Walle will join The Culinary Trust’s Board of Trustees, the non-profit arm of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, and focus on hunger relief, sustainable sourcing and culinary treasures programs. In her prior career, she spent 25 years as a consumer products advertising and marketing executive.

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