The Commons Team

After graduating from Williams College with a bachelor’s degree in religion, Mike lived and worked in Osaka, Japan as a teacher, copywriter, and bartender at his neighborhood pub. Upon returning to the United States, he began a 20-year career in the hospitality business, including owning and operating his own restaurant, The Broad Street Grill, in Virginia. Mike joined DC Central Kitchen (DCCK) in 2004. Under his leadership, DCCK’s Fresh Start Catering has expanded from traditional catering opportunities to include contracts to provide locally-sourced, scratched-cooked meals to schools across Washington, DC. DCCK’s Nutrition Lab facility, funded and launched under Mike’s leadership, has allowed DCCK to take on more contracts, rapidly increase investments in purchasing from local farms, and improve production efficiency. Due to its many social service programs, the Kitchen now employs over 150 people, approximately 40 percent who are graduates of the Kitchen’s Culinary Job Training Program.

Tatiana is a Philadelphia-based social entrepreneur who works to improve the vitality of rural and urban communities through food system connectivity and policy change. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business MBA program, she uses her formal training for social good. Tatiana is a co-founder and Executive Director of the Common Market, a local foods distribution center that connects over 150  schools, hospitals, grocers and workplaces to sustainable farms in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. In addition to running Common Market, she is a co-founder of a community based nonprofit organization, the East Park Revitalization Alliance, which focuses resources on educating children about the transformative qualities of nutrition, physical activity and environmental enhancement.

Suku is the Executive Director of the East Park Revitalization Alliance. Originally from India, he holds a PhD in Geology with a focus on Climate Change, and spent a decade working in academia. Suku’s passion is to use his skills and knowledge to empower vulnerable communities to affect change in their own environments. Over the past 15 years, he has worked with a number of grass-roots environmental organizations around the world, including New Orleans, Haiti, India, Nepal and West Philadelphia.

Haile is a Philadelphia native whose passion is to identify and implement entrepreneurial methods and progressive policy to build capacity in diverse communities. His creative approach to program development, community building and resource attraction has led to both the rapid growth of his nonprofit organizations and the improvement of regional communities. Haile is one of the founders of the Common Market Philadelphia and currently serves as Co-Director, supporting the organization through an incredible growth period. Before joining Common Market’s staff he served as the Pennsylvania State Director of the Center for Progressive Leadership (CPL) where he built the capacity of individuals and organizations within underrepresented communities. Haile is a graduate of University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and is proud to serve as a 2012 Food and Community Fellow with the Institute of Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Bob has long been active in food issues. In the early 1970s in Madison, Wisconsin he helped a large food cooperative called The Common Market buy produce from area farmers. In the 1990s he formed a workplace CSA in downtown Philadelphia and started the South & Passyunk Farmers’ Market, the first of about 40 outdoor farmers’ markets now in Philadelphia. From 1996 to 2000 he worked for the Food Trust where he planned and managed seven farmers’ markets in Philadelphia, Chester, and Camden. In 2000, he launched Farm to City to be a better advocate for farmers by connecting them to retail and wholesale markets in the Philadelphia area. For its Winter Harvest Buying Club, Farm to City aggregates food from 50 local farms and food artisans and delivers the food weekly to several hundred families in the 4-county Philadelphia area. Bob is one of the founders of The Common Market Mid-Atlantic. He also served as an appointed member of the Mayor’s Philadelphia Food Policy Council from it inception in 2009 through 2015.

Tina is the Chief Financial Officer & General Counsel and a co-founder of SAGE Dining Services, Inc., the nation’s leading provider of gourmet dining services for independent schools. Founded in 1990, SAGE’s mission is to provide high quality, freshly prepared meals to students, using local and sustainable products wherever possible, to help students develop an awareness and appreciation for the foods they eat. Tina served as an Adjunct Faculty member at Johns Hopkins University for over 15 years, teaching a variety of courses on Strategic Planning and Management to MBA candidates. She has also taught at the University of Maryland School of Business and Notre Dame of Maryland University. Prior to her work at SAGE, Tina was a Manager at Bain & Company, an international strategy consulting firm. She holds degrees from the Wharton School of Finance and Harvard Law School.

As the Reinvestment Fund’s Managing Director of Structured Finance, Ms. Szczepanski is responsible for deal structuring, relationship management, deal closing and post-closing asset management for the NMTC portfolio and CDFI Bond Guarantee program capital. Her responsibilities also include structuring participations in conjunction with TRF’s core lending. Ms. Szczepanski also serves as TRF’s Director of Portfolio Management. In this capacity, she manages TRF’s loan portfolio, including analyzing portfolio-wide performance and risk; developing and executing work-out plans for non-performing loans, and ensuring the processes that support lending, from reporting and billing to closing and documentation, run efficiently. With TRF since 2008, Ms. Szczepanski was previously responsible for implementing and managing TRF’s healthy food financing programs. Prior to joining TRF, Ms. Szczepanski was an Active Equity Research Associate at TIAA-CREF in New York, where she was lead financial analyst of the Global Paper and Forest Products sector and responsible for developing and presenting ideas based on proprietary models and research. Ms. Szczepanski is a Chartered Financial Analyst and has a Masters in City and Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Construction Science and Management from Clemson University. She has also been an adjunct lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Master of City Planning program.