Everything we
do is rooted in
our values.
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Respecting the needs of every actor in the supply chain.
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Change moves at the speed of trust, and trust is built by farmers, distributors, and buyers honoring their commitments to each other.
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This work is inherently experimental, and projects work best when we share understanding that we will evolve and optimize over time. Starting small typically yields a big impact.
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For farmers in the marketplace while also being realistic about the limitations and constraints of buyers.
Heather (“H”) Nieto-Friga
Owner & CEO
I have had these ideas since grad school ten years ago when I first encountered the new subfield of value chain coordination. I’ve seen so many sourcing pilots fail, where large companies or institutions attempted to source food from underserved and specialty producers, yet inadvertently ended up creating more harm for farmers who have suffered enough in our food system - often because the pilot design was flawed and didn’t consider all of the varying needs and thousands of details that need to be answered. Even the most well-intentioned pilots can be derailed by an obscure insurance requirement or quirk of procurement software. Knowing what questions to ask and what details to scan for can make a difference in moving a pilot to permanence.
I have an eclectic background in food systems across service jobs, farmers market management, food justice organizing, urban agriculture policy for the City of Austin, nonprofit farm-to-school and farm-to-institution work on the state and national scales, and as a national procurement director for Blue Apron and Imperfect Foods. I am also the chair of the board of Real Food Generation, serve on the California Farm to School Advisory Board, and advise a range of initiatives on supply chain justice and equity.
SupplyChange origin story:
Jacob Friga
Operations Associate
Jacob Friga joined the SupplyChange team to assist with the unique technical challenges associated with value chain coordination. With a professional background in music and audio engineering, he brings a creative and systems-thinking mindset to the team. Though new to the world of farm-to-institution supply chains, he is thrilled to be supporting the important work of re-regionalizing our food systems.
Anna Bohbot
Senior Associate
Anna V. Bohbot (Zulaica) is a foodservice professional, Holistic Nutrition Consultant, Cal alum, and published cookbook author in the Bay Area, California. Anna has worked in food since she was old enough to work - everything from front of house, back of house, menu writing, cooking for thousands in corporate dining, and running her own catering company. She managed food service operations at LinkedIn for over 10 years, overseeing full-service cafes and coffee bars all around the world. She has driven, from concept to completion, the design for an array of full service restaurants, all electric food halls, and coffee bars. In her latest role at LinkedIn, Anna influenced the global culinary program’s strategy around design of LinkedIn food spaces, sustainability, operations, programming, nutrition, marketing and more. In fact, in her tenure, Anna developed a Farm field trip program with Bay Area Green Tours where LinkedIn employees could visit the source of their local food, speak with the farmers and even get their hands dirty!
She is passionate about sustainable, equitable, just food systems and accessibility to fresh, local and seasonal food, personally and professionally investing her time and efforts into building relationships with organizations such as American Heart Association, Pie Ranch, Foodwise (formerly CUESA), Kitchen Table Advisors and RegenScore.
Anna currently serves on the SHFM Board and Culinary Institute of America’s Business Leadership Council and formerly was a part of the IFMA B&I Foodservice Advisory Council, Menus of Change University Research Collaborative, and also led a Women in Tech Food Group, a networking group with other female leaders in the corporate and university dining industry for over three years. In her free time, Anna enjoys gardening with her kids, doing yoga, and playing at the beach with her family.
Thought Partners
We regularly partner with seasoned, values-aligned practitioners in the food systems and value chain space that we trust. We highly recommend each of these thought partners for any aligned projects you seek - and all of us have experience working together on complex projects as a collective.
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Angela McKee-Brown (she/her)
Angela L. McKee-Brown brings over a decade of experience designing and building meaningful food experiences with communities.
She developed Project Reflect during her time as Entrepreneur in Residence with Emerson Collective. Prior to her residency, Angie served as the Executive Director of the Edible Schoolyard Project, a nonprofit based in Berkeley, CA that is focused on providing hands-on learning experiences in gardens, kitchens, and cafeterias that connect children to nature, food, and each other.
Before joining Edible, she served as the Director of Innovation and Strategy with San Francisco Unified School District’s Future Dining Experience where she oversaw the redesign of the school meal experience. She has also worked to expand access to market opportunities for chefs and food entrepreneurs who are women, immigrants, and people of color while at the non-profit La Cocina.
Angie was a 2016-2017 Stanford University d.school Civic Innovation Fellow, and she brings an equity-centered design framework to her work.
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Elliott Smith (he/him)
Kitchen Sync Strategies is a social enterprise brokerage and consulting firm that supports small producers and food hubs to sell their products to institutions across the US. Elliott co-founded KSS in 2019 with a mission to help bring more people in relationships with their food and farmers.
Kitchen Sync works with institutional buyers seeking to make economic, environmental, and social impacts with their procurement, with suppliers like regional food hubs and food hub networks seeking to enter the institutional food market channel, and with public and nonprofit sector supporters of building fairer, more nourishing regional food economies.
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Ben Thomas (he/him)
Ben has been working in institutional procurement for 13 years, most recently overseeing the statewide Farm to Cafeteria Program at the Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) from 2015-2022. Ben founded Shared Plate Strategies in 2022 to address the increasing need from school child nutrition departments for technical assistance to advance their Farm to School and scratch cooking visions while navigating complex procurement regulations, production processes, and sourcing and logistics pathways. Through Shared Plate Strategies LLC, Ben provides school districts with a robust set of services ranging from planning and facilitation to staff engagement, menu development, supplier onboarding, and development of procurement and tracking systems within state and federal guidelines. During his time at CAFF, their Farm to Cafeteria program directly supported more than 200 school districts in California to procure from local farms. Ben holds a Bachelor's Degree in Economics with Honors from Siena College in Albany, New York.
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Angélica Estrada Bugarín (she/her)
SWEET VALLEY PRODUCE
The small business experience was ingrained in Angie very early in life. Most of her childhood was spent in a 200,000 sq. ft. produce warehouse in California’s Central Valley or riding along with her father to purchase direct from farmers. When she wasn’t in school, she eagerly assumed the role of cashier and greeter while also running her own very small business (selling ice cream bars at the checkout stand).
Wanting to continue the family business and inspired by her parents' perseverance to survive despite not speaking the language, Angie earned a degree in managerial economics from the University of California, Davis. Following graduation, she accepted a position with a large fresh-cut produce processor in the Salinas Valley. This led her to the field of food safety and quality assurance management where she thrived for several years managing food safety programs under both FDA and USDA jurisdiction. After spending several years as a farm business advisor and value chain coordinator with Kitchen Table Advisors, Angie now focuses full time on continuing her father’s legacy with Sweet Valley Produce - an aggregator for BIPOC producers that also provides market services that empower local growers to have a voice in the market.
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More coming soon!
Check back for more thought partner updates!
“I’m a bridge in so many ways. The metaphor has always been with me. I think of my grandmother, Maria Consuelo Nieto, and how she grew up walking back and forth across the pontoon bridge that connected Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, and Del Rio, Texas.
From her, I learned the value of surviving as a chameleon: tough-skinned yet adaptable to many different worlds. Today, I am indeed a person of many worlds. I’m between ethnicities, between genders, and in my professional life I’ve worked in so many corners of the food system, from service jobs to nonprofit to government to corporate startup, always hungry to learn everything I could about the particularities and complexities of every space.
All of these lived experiences built my company’s approach, strategy, and humanity. I connect farmers to distributors to chefs to the people they feed by honoring the specifics of their differences and then bridging them through practical, detail-driven action and iteration.”
A THOUGHT FROM H
ON INSPIRATION AND WHAT KEEPS HER GOING