Robin Kelson, Executive Director

Robin joined AERO’s staff in 2020 after two terms on the AERO Board of Directors. She is a graduate of the Leadership Montana Flagship Class of 2023. Trained as an attorney, biochemist and facilitator, with a talent for synthesizing information, Robin has worked with both start-up and Fortune 500 companies, and held executive positions in the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Her passion and curiosity focuses on human vitality and the resiliency principles built into evolution and ecosystems, and this has led her career choices in the sustainable energy, stewardship agriculture, and nutritional health fields for over 25 years. Robin is also an ex officio member of the AERO Board of Directors.

Email Robin at rkelson@aeromt.org.

Erin Austin, Director of Community Partners and Sales

Erin believes growing, cooking, and sharing food in community heals. Her diverse career path has always centered on sustainability and equity. She brings experience working on organic farms, managing school meal programs, researching transit oriented development, advocating for sustainable agriculture policy, and directing nature-based therapeutic trauma programs. She believes that through a process of reconnecting to our internal environment, our communities, and the outdoors, we can restore balance with nature, pursue ambitious solutions to climate change, and lead joy-filled, sustainable lives. Erin is a former AERO Board member.

Email Erin at: erin@aeromt.org

Sammie McGowan, Director of Marketing and Communications

After graduating from the George Washington University with a BA concentrating in marketing and international business, Sammie set her sights on conquering Corporate America. When that failed to fulfill her, she moved to Alaska to become a hiking guide in Denali National Park where she found her passion for caring for the earth and all its inhabitants. As a Sustainability Educator for the Whitefish School District, she found a passion for growing healthy food, creating healthy soil, and making healthy food accessible for all people.

Email Sammie at: sammie@abundantmontana.com

Mary Callahan Baumtark, Director of Philanthropy

Mary is a former arts administrator with a background in nonprofits and community organizing. A non-Indigenous Montanan, Mary grew up in Missoula and currently lives in Central Montana with her rancher husband and two dogs. In her free time, you’ll catch Mary writing about craft history and criticism or carving wooden spoons, her newest hobby.

Email Mary at mary@aeromt.org.

Emilee Wood, Communications Coordinator for Abundant Montana

Emilee received her BA in Anthropology from Ball State University. Through her degree and time abroad, Emilee developed an interest in elevating the voices and stories of others, particularly those which offer “counter-narratives.” She believes that food and land are a potent means of constructing identity and community, and that a reciprocal relationship with the land will create a healthy future for all. She can often be found with her hands in the dirt, and enjoys sharing homegrown food and flowers with the people she loves.

Email Emilee at: emilee@abundantmontana.com

Michal DeChellis, Montana Food Economy Initiative Program Manager

Michal is a food systems consultant with a background in public health, farm to school, and program and project management. She is passionate about building an equitable and humane food system and promoting healthy and vibrant individuals, communities, and ecosystems. Michal leads AERO’s Montana Food Economy Initiative (MFEI), promoting cross-sector, community-based projects for food system resilience. Created in 2016, MFEI’s current focus is facilitating Community Food System Assessments  to support community stakeholders indentifying their local resources and opportunities for building more reliable and resilient local food systems. 

Email Michal at: programs@aeromt.org

Clare Jurczak, Billings Community Food System Assessment Coordinator

Clare is AERO’s Billings Community Food System Assessment Coordinator. Clare grew up cooking, preserving, and subsistence harvesting food with her family in Alaska. Sharing food is how she saw her community take care of each other and inspired her to take action in food security initiatives. When Clare moved to Montana a decade ago, she became enamored by the working agricultural landscapes and people stewarding them. Clare is passionate about supporting efforts to make Montana’s food system more equitable and sustainable for all. Clare brings a background in resource monitoring and environmental education to the team and is a working ceramics artist.

Kirsten Sabin, Abundant Montana Sales Manager

As a lifelong Montana resident, Kirsten deeply connects to this state, its people, and its magnificent scenery. She holds a degree in Business Marketing from the University of Montana and has had a diverse career path. Kirsten was drawn to join Abundant Montana’s team because she wants to help make a positive impact for Montana’s purpose-driven food and farming businesses who are ‘in the trenches’ working hard to succeed. When not working with Abundant Montana, she enjoys teaching yoga, skiing, hiking, trail running with her Aussie, trying new recipes and family time. She serves on the Board for the Backpack Assistance Program in Whitefish.

Email Kirsten at: kirsten@abundantmontana.com

Melody Snyder, Southeast Local Food Coordinator

Melodie grew up in rural Washington State and moved to Billings in 2017 to pursue her Bachelor’s Degree in Small Business Management with a minor in Communication Studies and Organizational Leadership. She has a wide range of experience from event planning and management to social media marketing and working at local restaurants. Melodie has a passion for food accessibility and a passion to help make Montana a better place for everyone.

Email Melodie at: melodie@abundantmontana.com

Olivia FitzGerald, Central Local Food Coordinator

Olivia grew up in Jordan, MT where she learned to love the Montana prairie and the small towns that inhabit it. In college, she developed an interest in ecology and conservation. This interest and her education took her to South Dakota, Colorado, and Kansas working for the BLM and the NRCS. A desire to get her hands dirty and boots on the ground brought her back to Montana working on ranches and a farm. This work and the people in it gave her a new perspective. Olivia is passionate about building community, supporting local producers, and making local foods more accessible to all Montanans.

Email Olivia at: olivia@abundantmontana.com

Sophie Albert, Whitefish

Interim Board Chair

Sophie Albert is the Executive Director at the North Valley Food Bank in Whitefish, MT, where she is working on shifting the focus from traditional emergency food assistance to providing more holistic services and building a strong community food system with abundant access to fresh, nutritious and local food for all. Sophie has more than 10 years of non-profit experience managing educational and social service programs in Indonesia, Egypt, Pakistan and the US.

Sophie is a passionate advocate for socially just systems and resilient communities. Prior to building food security in North-West Montana, Sophie served as the Director for Refugee Programs at The Alliance in Houston, Texas, where she led the Covid-19 response for local refugee and immigrant communities. She holds a Master of Disaster Management from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Sophie is originally from Germany and her family is home in a small farming community in the Lusatian Mountains on the southeastern border with Czech Republic and Poland. She moved to the US in 2016 to join her husband, Chris, after meeting him overseas. In her free time, Sophie loves swimming, snowboarding, writing, rummaging the local bookstore, and exploring the beauty of Montana with her tiny daughter, Frankie, her husband and their dog, Einstein.

Ada Smith, Ph.D., Missoula

Secretary

Growing up on a small farmstead in rural Wisconsin and summers on her grandparents ranch in Montana were formative in developing Ada’s interest in food systems that connect and sustain people and places. Ada is an environmental social scientist and recently finished her PhD at the University of Montana where she worked with ranchers to understand how adaptive rangeland management practices are being utilized to support ecological and economic sustainability in Montana. Currently, she is a postdoctoral scholar at Oregon State University working on research with ranchers across the U.S. to understand linkages between economic, social, and ecological well-being across different grazing management strategies. Ada also has a background in community-based participatory research from her MA at the University of British Columbia where she worked in partnership with Gitxaala Nation to understand and support the integration of Indigenous knowledge into educational curriculum as a pathway toward community food sovereignty. Ada seldom says ‘no’ to adventure and learning new ways to move through landscapes — she is especially excited about developing her recently acquired skills in hunting in order to harvest more of her own food here in Montana.

Jeremy Nadison, Bozeman

Treasurer

Jeremy brings nearly ten years of sustainable infrastructure investment and regional food system development and lending experience to the AERO board. After beginning his career at a project finance investment firm, Jeremy has spent several years supporting his regional food system through land access, processing infrastructure and financing projects. Since working with a private lender for farmers, ranchers and other small food systems companies, Jeremy now works with a variety of energy, food infrastructure, and other businesses on finance and investment activities.

Jeremy lives in Bozeman and loves sewing and spending time in the mountains of Southwest Montana.

Scot Chisholm, Whitefish

As Classy‘s CEO, which he co founded in 2006, Scot helped raise $6B+ for social good through that software company and non-profit giving platform. His current Montana-based projects include Haskill Creek Farms, a for-profit social enterprise and certified B Corp, focused on wellness for our human and planetary health, and Save Farmland, a 501 (c) (3) non profit, committed to preserving farmland and supporting the future of sustainable community agriculture and healthy local food access in Montana’s Flathead Valley.

Genevieve Bennett, Whitefish

Gen directs strategic outreach at Forest Trends, driving innovations in conservation finance through strategic partnerships, thought leadership, and coalition-building. Genevieve is an expert in environmental markets and finance, and was lead author on the first comprehensive global market assessments of nature-based water sector investments and biodiversity credits. She has written for a range of trade and academic publications including Environmental Finance magazine, Civil Engineering, and Nature, on topics including biodiversity finance, natural infrastructure, bioeconomy, eco-entrepreneurship, strategies for scaling public and private conservation investments, and other market cross-cutting issues. She holds an MSc from the London School of Economics, a certificate in Alternative Investments from Harvard Business School Online, and a BA from New York University.