Board & Structure

Slow Food UK – Board of Directors

CRAIG SAMS (chair) founded Whole Earth Foods organic food company with his brother Gregory in 1967. In 1991 he founded Green & Black’s Organic Chocolate with his wife Josephine Fairley, whose Maya Gold chocolate was the first product to carry the Fairtrade mark. In 2004 he created the ‘Nomato’ range of tomato-free products. Craig is author of: About Macrobiotics, The Brown Rice Cookbook, The Little Food Book and writes a monthly column in Natural Product News. He has been both honorary treasurer and chair of the Soil Association. Craig currently operates Stonelynk Wood, an organic chestnut coppice for biochar, and runs Judges Organic Bakery (est.1826). He is co-founder of Carbon Gold Ltd, a biochar project and development marketing company. Craig is group leader of Slow Food Hastings.

PRUE LEITH OBE founded the Leith’s Good Food Group, Leith’s Restaurant and Leith’s School of Food and Wine. She has been a food columnist for the Daily Mail, Sunday Express, the Guardian and the Daily Mirror, has written 12 cookbooks and is a judge on the BBC’s Great British Menu. Prue has been deeply involved in promoting healthy school food, establishing and chairing Focus on Food and the Hoxton Apprentice. Prue has been a non-executive director of British Rail, Safeway plc, Halifax plc, Woolworths and Whitbread plc. Prue is also chair of the School Food Trust.

CAROLINE BENNETT is the founder and owner of Moshi Moshi, the UK’s first kaiten sushi bar, Caroline aims to represent contemporary Japan in the UK. She is actively involved in marine conservation though work managed by World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), on a fisheries project called ‘Invest in Fish’. Moshi Moshi has been recognised for its work on marine conservation and received the Green Apple Award in 2006 and the RSPCA’s Innovation Award in 2007. She is the UK representative for Slow Food Internationals Slow Fish campaign. Through Caroline’s work, with her own restaurant and the Pisces-RFR project, Caroline is both encouraging others to improve sustainability and also making this improvement more logistically possible by directly connecting restaurants with responsible fishermen. Caroline was also recently lauded as a 2009 international Seafood Champion by SeaWeb’s Seafood Choices.

CLARE MARRIAGE is the Managing Director at Doves Farm Foods which she founded with her husband Michael in 1978. Clare is a past chair of the Soil Association Food Processing Committee, has served Food from Britain and Defra committees in the establishment of organic food standards, holds the Directorship of a Community Interest Food Company and is the founder member and leader of of Slow Food Berkshire & Wiltshire.

SIMON DAUKES joined Haymarket media group in 1979 and fulfilled a number of roles before becoming Group Managing Director of Haymarket exhibitions. In this role he launched exhibitions like BBC Good Food Show Scotland and Masterchef Live and acquired The Cereals Event and The Wine Show. Simon left the group in 2010 to launch Ash Barton, an organic self catering manor house in North Devon where he keeps 70 free range organic chickens, 50 rare breed sheep and 9 Devon Ruby Red Beef cattle. He is also now COO of Chargemaster, Europe’s leading provider of charging infrastructure for Low carbon electric vehicles. Simon is an enthusiastic cook and when he is not cooking for his family does his best to singlehandedly keep London’s restaurant business afloat.

MATTHEW FORT has been the Food and Drink Editor at the Guardian since 1989. He has also written for Esquire, The Observer, Country Living, Decanter and Waitrose Food Illustrated. In 1992 he won the title of Glenfiddich Food Writer of the Year and, in 1993, Glenfiddich Restaurant Writer of the Year, as well as The Restaurateurs’ Association Food Writer of the Year. He was Glenfiddich Cookery Writer of the Year in 2005. He has written three books on food, the third of which, Eating Up Italy, was the Guild of Food Writers Book of the Year in 2005, and his fifth, Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons: Travels in Sicily on a Vespa celebrates Matthew’s ongoing passion for Italy, which he visits every year. In the course of writing and broadcasting about food for 30 years, Matthew has met thousands of producers & farmers of exceptional British produce. Fort is a Slow Food supporter to the core, keen to support Britain’s food producers and bring their message to a wider and receptive audience

Slow Food Advisors

Slow Food Advisors provide support on their area of expertise and regularly consult with our CEO Catherine Gazzoli and the Slow Food UK team

LAURENCE BARRETT is an independent Executive Coach and Change Consultant. He completed his coaching certification at the Tavistock Insitute and is also a Visiting Lecturer at INSEAD on the Masters Programme in Clinical Management. Until December 2011 Laurence was Director of Group Resourcing and Development for Prudential plc leading the Groups Talent and Organisation Development agenda. He joined the Group from Abbey National where he was Director of Resourcing and Development, working as part of the senior team responsible for the turnaround of the business and its sale to Banco Santander SA. Prior to this he worked internationally across a number of industry sectors in a variety of internal and external consulting roles, focusing on organisational change and management development.  Laurence began his career at British Airways as a graduate entrant after studing Law at Warwick University. He holds an MBA from Lancaster University.

Structure

Slow Food UK is a not for profit company limited by guarantee which is affiliated to Slow Food International (SFI).