Insights from the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment

Stefanie Valentic is the award-winning Editorial Director of Waste360. She is entrenched in the waste and recycling industry, covering topics such as waste diversion, anaerobic digestion, food waste, plastics and zero waste, just to name a few. In her spare time, Stefanie volunteers as a Circular Cleveland Ambassador to encourage waste reduction and sustainable systems within the municipality. Valentic graduated from Ohio University with a Bachelor of Science in Journalism

Alex Nichols-Vinueza supports the US Food Waste team’s portfolio of projects at WWF, including work with policymakers and the agricultural, grocery retail, hospitality, and food service sectors. Alex is the team lead for the Food Waste Warrior program, which offers grants and a hands-on curriculum for schools to reduce their food waste and learn about the food system. He recently helped lead a coalition of environmental NGOs to develop a policy action plan for Congress and administration to reduce US food loss & waste by 50% by 2030. He also supports the Pacific Coast Food Waste Commitment, one of the largest public-private initiatives on food waste, which aims to accelerate progress on the region’s commitment to reduce food waste by half by 2030. Professionally, Alex brings 12 years of project management and partnership experience across tech, government, and sustainability consulting. He is bilingual in Spanish and English, having worked internationally in Colombia and Central America. Alex holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MEM from Duke’s Nichols School of the Environment. Alex hails from Traverse City in northern Michigan (“the cherry capital of the world”), where his appreciation for the environment began at a young age– camping and traipsing around its many parks and lakes, and later working summers on local farms. Alex lives in Washington, DC, where he enjoys playing soccer, hanging at the local community pool with his family, and hiking with his dogs in the many nearby parks.

Natasha is a committed planetary preserver and ESG Analyst for Sprouts, and she is currently supporting Sprouts’ goal of achieving zero waste by 2030. She is responsible for operational sustainability initiatives at Sprouts, including the Food Rescue Program, Food Waste Recycling initiatives, and all other recycling programs. And she has been a great collaborator in the PCFWC, most recently sharing Sprouts’ best practices to monitor and reduce food waste with other PCFWC signatories last week

Andrew Harig is vice president of tax, trade, sustainability, and policy development for FMI – the Food Industry Association. For the last 19 years, Harig has been responsible for representing FMI’s members before Congress and the Administration, with a primary focus on agriculture, taxes, trade, sustainability, food prices, and pensions.

Harig is the staff director for FMI’s Sustainability Executive Committee (SEC), which is comprised of thirty industry sustainability professionals. In this capacity, he also serves as the retail lead for the Food Waste Reduction Alliance, a joint coalition of FMI, Consumer Brands Association, and National Restaurant Association.

Prior to joining FMI, Harig was an associate trade advisor and speechwriter for the U.S. Senate Finance Committee under its Chairman, Max Baucus (D-MT). From 1999-2001, he was the senior research associate for the Global Economic Policy Project at the New America Foundation, a Washington, DC-based think tank. Harig started his public affairs career in Washington, DC as a research assistant at the Economic Strategy Institute, a non-partisan public policy research organization.

Harig holds a bachelor’s degree from the College of William and Mary and earned his master’s at DePaul University in Chicago.