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.

LOUISE (SARAH) SMITH is honorary treasurer of Slow Food UK, and joined the Board in 2011. Louise qualified as a chartered accountant with PWC in 2006, and went on to spend 18 months as part of the group accounting team at ICI, and a couple of years in the music industry, before deciding that she wanted to make the move to work in the voluntary sector. Louise is now Director of Finance and Resources at ACEVO, the leading representative body for charity leaders in the UK. Louise is also treasurer of Solace Women’s Aid, a fantastic organisation that supports women and children who are victims of domestic and sexual violence.

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.

CLARE BROOKS has over twenty years’ experience of working with charities, community groups, foundations and donors. She has skills in fundraising, grant-making and extensive knowledge and understanding of membership networks. She is Director of Philanthropy at Community Foundation Network (CFN), the membership organization for the UK’s 57 community foundations. She has worked there since 1999. Over the past 12 years CFN has raised more than £350 million to benefit local communities and projects. Collectively, community foundations fund 25,000+ charities a year on issues that range from education, environment and poverty to the arts. CFN estimates that no one lives more than 30 miles from a project funded by one of its members. Her day to day work ranges from visiting local members, to promoting them to a variety of stakeholders, and to building donor networks. Clare is also a board member of The European Association for Philanthropy and Giving and NESsT UK, a fund for social enterprises in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Clare also runs the Beacon Awards, the UK’s “Nobel prize” for philanthropy. Clare has been an adviser to the Slow Food UK since 2010 and was an early member of the movement, and is member of Slow Food London.

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

JOANNA BLYTHMAN is a food writer, investigative journalist and broadcaster and author of The Food We Eat and Shopped.

CHARLES CAMPION is a writer on restaurants and food for London’s Evening Standard for over a decade and is a patron of Oxford Gastronomica.

RANDOLPH HODGSON OBE is the owner of the award winning Neal’s Yard Dairy, champion of British Farmhouse Cheeses, and one of the pioneers in rejuvenating London’s Borough Market.

SARA JAYNE STANES OBE is director of the Academy of Culinary Arts , chair of the Academy of Chocolate and a food writer and author of the award winning ‘Chocolate: the Definitive Guide’.

Structure

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