Robyn Adair
Apprenticeship Instructor
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Robyn Adair grew up in the West/Southwest suburbs of Chicago, skeptical of the food system (eating a lot of processed foods) and loving learning. When asked, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" she thought about what the world needed most and decided to study the evolution of the food system, natural ecosystems, and the role humans play in shaping them. Since then, she has worked in education and plant production from the Pacific Northwest to the Southwest to as far Southeast as the island of Grenada. She received a BA and a BS for her studies in Sustainable Community Development and Agriculture at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA, where she apprenticed on various organic and small farms and worked in native plant nurseries. She earned her Science and Agriculture Secondary Education certifications through the TeachNOLA fellowship and taught middle school science in New Orleans. She completed her MS in Interdisciplinary Ecology at University of Florida in Gainesville, FL, researching cover crops for plant-parasitic nematode and weed suppression in Florida and Haiti. Although her first love is the soil, she gained a taste for the sea racing sailboats on the Gulf coast, living aboard a sailboat for four years, sailing 4500 nautical miles in the Caribbean with her husband and dog, and completing the 2022 Chicago-Mac Race. She most recently worked for Texas A&M Extension in the horticulture unit in Houston, TX, and she's happy to come full circle to her home city teaching urban farming with Windy City Harvest. She hopes to continue to develop regenerative small-scale agriculture and to help all people connect with and protect our food supply.
Britt Calendo
Program Director
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Britt Calendo is the program director for Windy City Harvest. In this role, she oversees our Apprenticeship, Corps, and Youth Farm programs. Britt joined the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2014, working at Rodeo Farm as a Harvest Corps crew leader. From 2014 to 2018, Britt worked as the PCC Austin Farm coordinator, where she helped to build out and run a community farm in collaboration with PCC Community Wellness. Britt was the manager for the VeggieRx program, Windy City Harvest's prescription produce program from 2018 to 2021. She has a master's degree in social work and is excited about combining her background in social work and public health with sustainable urban agriculture. She loves to see so many of our program graduates working in the field of urban agriculture and coming back to join our Windy City Harvest team on staff.
Samantha Creightney
Director of Operations
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Samantha Creightney was inspired to pursue a career in sustainable urban agriculture in after reading an article on food deserts and food insecurity. While completing her training at the Green Corps Chicago in 2007, Samantha wanted to teach youth how to grow food. She joined the community gardening department of the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2008. Samantha was hired as the growing assistant and moved into the role of coordinator of the Green Youth Farm (Windy City Harvest Youth Farm), where she worked until 2011. As lifelong Chicagoan, helping her community has been a her passion, through her work as an artist. Samantha has continued to work with youth and young adults in the Austin community on Chicago's west side. In 2022, Samantha re-joined the Garden as the community education manager for Windy City Harvest.
Laurie Dettmers
Coordinator, Therapeutic Horticultural
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Laurie Dettmers obtained her Horticultural Therapy certification through the Chicago Botanic Garden in 2009. She completed a six-month internship under the guidance of Gene Rothert. She is currently the Therapeutic Horticultural Coordinator at Windy City Harvest, the Chicago Botanic Garden's Urban Agriculture department. She leads plant-based activities at different sites throughout the south and west side of Chicago. Prior to her work at the Chicago Botanic Garden, Laurie worked for 12 years at rehabilitation hospitals throughout the Chicago area. She completed her Master Gardner certification and her Master Naturalist certification through the University of Illinois Extension. She has worked as a greenhouse manager for six years and continues to do landscaping. Laurie resides outside of Chicago with her family. She loves gardening, weaving, and hiking.
Reynaldo Engram
Market Sales Associate
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Reynaldo Engram is a lifelong Lawndale resident who is passionate about raising self-awareness. He enjoys meeting new people and mentoring in the neighborhood. He is a Windy City Harvest 2016 Corps and 2017 Apprenticeship graduate, and certified in sustainable agriculture. He loves to help others, grow food, and represent Windy City Harvest. Engram is certified in Good Agricultural Practices (Illinois Extension), ServSafe handling, and CPR. He was previously the Hilton Grower, managing a rooftop farm for farm-to-table niche vegetable and edible flower production. He currently oversees the day-to-day operations for the Farm on Ogden retail space, greenhouse, living wall, aquaponics production, and building maintenance, ensuring that everything is running smoothly.
Aurea France
Education and Wellness
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Aurea is the Manager of Education and Wellness who brings together movement, creativity, and community care in everything she does. With a strong foundation in community engagement, program management, and exercise science, she designs programs that support both physical and mental well-being. She holds a bachelor's degree in Exercise Science and Education from the University of Kentucky.
Throughout her career, Aurea has worked across nonprofit spaces in arts education, curriculum development, and youth program leadership. She is a certified personal trainer and behavior therapist, with hands-on experience supporting children with autism and seniors living with Alzheimer's disease—work that continues to shape her compassionate, participant-centered approach. Outside of work, you can often find Aurea at the gym or in the dance studio, where she volunteers her time every Saturday teaching ballet to youth, helping the next generation build confidence, discipline, and joy through movement.
Iririan Francisco
Community Health Worker
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Iririan Francisco is a resident of La Villita, right around the corner from Farm on Ogden. She started her journey through Windy City Harvest as part of the North Lawndale Youth Farm from 2013 to 2016. Iririan returned in 2021 as the North Lawndale coordinator and currently is the VeggieRx coordinator.
Raymond Gardner
Facilities Manager
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Raymond Gardner was born and raised in Chicago. Chicago has always been a place where everybody helps one another. Raymond fell in love with nature as a young man going fishing with his grandad. He remembers playing with the worms and the soil and feeling a sense of joy. That passion lead him into landscaping for extra money and began his interest in entrepreneurship. Raymond worked at Growing Home, a USDA-certified farm for two seasons. He worked there as a production assistant and a crew leader, gaining ServSafe and OSHA training work safety certifications. He became familiar with urban agriculture and his love for the field continued to grow. This led to his two seasons as a crew leader at Windy City Harvest, where he led the Corps crew and developed a love for leadership and team-building. He worked for Justice Grow for a year in the cannabis industry. Eventually, he found his way back to Windy City Harvest, where he now serves as the Harvest Corps coordinator, recruiting for the Corps program and crew leaders, job placements, and serving as a strong mentor for the Corps crews and crew leaders throughout the seasons. He also stays in touch with our Corps alumni, while developing his expertise working with transitional jobs and workforce development programs.
Alicia Green, HTR
Coordinator, Buehler Enabling Garden
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Alicia Green is a registered horticultural therapist and the coordinator of the Buehler Enabling Garden at the Chicago Botanic Garden. She delivers on-site therapeutic horticulture programs, maintains the Enabling Garden, and oversees the Veteran Internship Program. She has a B.A. from the University of Illinois and an M.A. in counseling from Northeastern Illinois University. Alicia received her horticulture therapy training through the Chicago Botanic Garden Certificate Program.
Rachel Hoffman
Farm Coordinator
Rachel Hoffman is a Youth Farm Coordinator at the Washington Park Youth Farm with Windy City Harvest. As a youth worker and organizer for many years, they're passionate about helping young folks develop confidence in their ability to change the world in big and small ways, including growing food for themselves and their communities. Rachel began their journey as a grower with a humble community garden plot in Albany Park. They simultaneously started working with local urban farms to deliver food during the beginning of the pandemic. All of this inspired them to join the Windy City Harvest Apprenticeship Program in 2022 and transition into a career farming and tending to the land and each other.
Joshua Hughes
Sales Manager
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Joshua Hughes, Sales Manager, oversees all markets and wholesale distribution at Windy City Harvest. With extensive experience in food safety, merchandising, marketing, and community outreach, he aims to maximize the quality of our customer experience. Joshua graduated from Arizona State University with his B.S. in Sociology in 2018. His community engagement experience stems from organizing creative performance spaces for marginalized musicians and artists in Columbus, Ohio. In service of food access in urban agriculture since 2020, Joshua works to further assist the development of sustainable food systems to better serve Chicago's South and West Side communities.
Aidan Jacobs
Assistant Horticulturist
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Aidan Jacobs is an Assistant Horticulturist with the Chicago Botanic Garden working on the Eleanor Roosevelt Vegetable Garden at the Obama Presidential Center. With a background in urban agriculture and regenerative growing practices, Aidan has led food production and landscape projects across Chicago, including rooftop vegetable gardens, regenerative flower farms, and mushroom cultivation initiatives.
Aidan's passion for growing food began early in life while gardening alongside his father and helping grow produce for local food pantries. That experience shaped his belief that gardens can nourish both communities and connections between people. His professional experience includes sustainable crop production, soil health management, irrigation systems, landscape installation, and maintaining productive community growing spaces.
He is especially interested in regenerative agriculture, native ecology, and creating beautiful, productive landscapes that make fresh food more accessible in urban communities. Outside of work, Aidan enjoys cultivating gourmet mushrooms, studying ecological growing methods, and exploring Chicago's vibrant food and gardening culture.
Ketaurah James
Manager, VeggieRx
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Ketaurah James started her journey with Windy City Harvest in the Youth Farm program in 2009. During her time at the North Lawndale Youth Farm, she learned the value of urban agriculture, and how food access directly affects her and her neighborhood. Early on, she knew that this was something she was very passionate about and wanted to promote a healthier lifestyle for everyone. Ketaurah now works as the VeggieRx manager, helping to distribute fresh vegetables to communities like her own, which have experienced disinvestment in food access. She takes pride in being a part of a stepping-stone for participants in changing their eating habits. She hopes to continue to help people reach their goals for themselves and their community.
Megan Joyce
Farm Coordinator
Megan grew up on the Southwest side of Chicago, frequently helping her grandma grow bok choy, water spinach, amaranth, and many other beloved Chinese vegetables in the garden. After moving to Omaha, Nebraska, a passion for health equity and social change led her to pursue a degree in Community Health and Wellness at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she learned about community health programming, nutrition, and social factors of health. After moving back to the city, she volunteered with the Chicago Food Sovereignty Coalition, deepening her understanding of food as foundational to social justice and eventually leading her to discover the field of urban agriculture. Throughout college, she worked with youth in a variety of settings including day camps, sleepaway camps, and after school programming. She is now entering her third growing season as a farmer and is excited to combine her experience with youth development and urban farming as the North Lawndale Youth Farm Coordinator for Windy City Harvest.
Sarah Leff
Director of Strategy & Growth
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Sarah Leff is the Director of Strategy and Growth for Windy City Harvest. She joined the team in 2024 and leads the development and implementation of new programmatic initiatives, partnerships, and revenue streams to meet emerging community needs and ensure organizational sustainability. With more than seven years of experience in nonprofit organizations serving the west and south sides of Chicago, Sarah came to Windy City Harvest from Saint Anthony Hospital where she served in a blended role as the administrative project director of a $15.6M collaborative grant and oversaw the Institutional Partnerships and Giving Team. She earned her master of public health degree at the University of Illinois at Chicago. As a public health practitioner, Sarah is committed to taking a collaborative approach to health justice, working across systems to address the root causes of inequities.
Iris Michael
Senior Manager of Garden Partnerships
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Iris grew up working on a horse farm and gardening with her mother, who affectionately named Iris after her favorite flower. As a teenager, she became vegan which sparked a passion for learning about food systems and social and environmental justice. Iris graduated summa cum laude from Loyola University Chicago with a Bachelors of Science in Environmental Science: Food Systems and Sustainable Agriculture and a minor in studio art. She interned for Loyola's urban agriculture program and the Stein Learning Gardens at St. Sabina. She co-led Loyola's mushrooms cultivation program and is passionate about mycology. She started at Windy City Harvest as a crew leader for the corps program before moving into the Rooftop Farming Coordinator role stewarding our partnership with McCormick Place. In 2026 Iris stepped into her current role as the Senior Manager of Garden Partnerships and oversees teams at McCormick Place Rooftop Farm and the Eleanor Roosevelt Fruit and Vegetable Garden at the Obama Presidential Center.
Christopher Morgan
Field Supervisor
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Chris Morgan was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. Chris's family came north from Hernando, Mississippi where they had a sizable farm that grew collards, sweet potatoes, berries and apples.
Even though they had minimal space in Chicago, Chris still grew up doing lots of gardening with his family and he gained a deep passion for plants. Chris has done a lot of work in the food service industry, first as a Driver and Dispatcher for a food delivery service, then as the Market Manager for a fresh foods market.
While working as a Market Manager, Chris was able to live and work on a sustainable farm in Pembroke, IL. That experience deepened his passion for plants and gave him invaluable practical experience in farming.
Now at Windy City Harvest, Chris works as a Field Supervisor which allows him to do production level farming and job readiness training with justice involved individuals. He has also recently joined the WCH incubator program and he is very excited to produce food for the community with his new business Sol De Chicago Farm.
Maya Morris
Manager of Workforce Development
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Maya Morris serves as the workforce development manager, where she supports individuals facing barriers to employment in building skills, confidence and pathways toward meaningful work. With a Master of Social Work and a background that includes interning at this very organization, Maya brings both empathy and practical experience towards her role. She is passionate about creating programs that are both compassionate and effective and remains committed to showing up in this community with integrity and care. Outside of work, Maya is an advocate for mental wellness, continuous learning, and creating space for people to feel seen and supported.
Darryl Motley
Rodeo Farm Coordinator
Darryl Motley is a Chicago-based sustainable agriculture professional with over 15 years of leadership experience and specialized training in urban horticulture and food production. A graduate of the Windy City Harvest Sustainable Horticulture and Agriculture Certificate Program, he brings hands-on expertise in crop planning, planting, harvesting, food safety, and sustainable growing practices. Darryl is committed to strengthening communities through urban agriculture, responsible land stewardship, and increased access to fresh, locally grown food.
Joe O'Meara
Senior Manager of Farm Operations
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Joe O'Meara joined Windy City Harvest in 2023 as the Farm Business manager. He brings more than a decade of growing experience in a variety of settings. Joe's passion has always been food-related, with his first career in the restaurant world. After attending Kendall College for the culinary arts, he discovered an appreciation of locally grown produce while running the event kitchens at Frontera and Topolobampo. He transitioned from chef to farmer, starting at City Farm, then spending a few years at Tempel Farm Organics as the assistant farm manager and Radical Root as the tractor operator. As their first farm coordinator, Joe designed and implemented a garden for people with special needs at Opportunity Knocks, a nonprofit in Maywood. At Council Oaks Montessori School in Blue Island, Joe pioneered a farm-to-table program, managed the school kitchen, and developed a school learning garden and orchard. While launching and operating his own project, BIOS Farm, Joe ran a two-acre urban farm in Blue Island for five years, with a successful CSA model and thriving market sales. He is passionate about growing food, native plants, and insects, and is excited to share his expertise with Windy City Harvest programs.
Yari Ramos
Market Coordinator
Yaritza Ramos is the Market Coordinator at the Farm on Ogden. Yaritza joined the Windy City Harvest team in 2019 as an intern in high school. She participated in a horticultural therapy internship offered to high school students in the southwest side of the city. After high school, she joined the WCH Apprenticeship program and later graduating in 2022. Yaritza returned in 2024 and joined the retail team. She is dedicated to providing accessibility to fresh fruits and vegetables in the community and tries to stay knowledgeable about any house plants that are frequently sold in the retail store to make sure customers get the best plant for their home or garden space. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with friends and family, visiting new places throughout the city, and relaxing with her two cats.
Tara Samuels
Field Supervisor
Growing up, I developed a strong connection to gardening and plant care that sparked my passion for urban agriculture and environmental sustainability. Since beginning my professional journey in urban agriculture with Windy City Harvest as an apprentice in 2020, I have gained hands-on experience in food production, horticulture, and community-based green initiatives. Through my work at Greencorps Chicago, I expanded my knowledge of the green infrastructure industry by participating in projects focused on sustainability, landscaping, stormwater management, and environmental stewardship.
My experience has strengthened my skills in plant identification, agricultural production, teamwork, and community engagement while reinforcing my commitment to creating greener, healthier urban spaces. I am passionate about using horticulture and green infrastructure practices to positively impact communities and contribute to long-term environmental resilience.
Bailey Uttich
Aquaponics Coordinator
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Bailey Uttich, Aquaponics Coordinator, was first inspired to pursue a career in urban agriculture during her undergrad at Loyola Chicago, working as the hydroponics systems manager in their urban agriculture program. As the aquaponics coordinator, Bailey oversees the production of mostly romaine lettuce in the 52,000-gallon aquaponics system. In addition to growing, Bailey frequently monitors water quality for fish health checks and system maintenance projects to ensure production and sustainability goals are met.
Kenya Vera-Sample
Grower
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Kenya's affinity for nature began at a very early age, with countless fishing and hiking excursions with her dad and gardening with her grandfather. She began her career in urban agriculture in 2008 in the historic black farming community of Pembroke Illinois. Kenya's love for the environment, community, wellness, and enterprise has advanced her work with organizations such as Grow Great Englewood, Englewood Village Farms, Urban Growers Collective, and Black Oaks. She is on the Chicago Food Policy Action Council as co-chair of "Produce in Protest." She is an owner and operator of Du Sable City Winery and Vineyards, specializing in an agroforestry enterprise that specializes in the cultivation of elderberry. The vineyard is a part of a 100-year plan in Englewood.
Carmen Vergara
Vice President of Community Partnerships
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Carmen Vergara administers the financial, operational, and strategic efforts of our Windy City Harvest division. She comes to the Garden with 20 years of extensive experience as a public health practitioner. Prior to joining us, Carmen served as chief operating officer at Esperanza Health Centers, a community health center serving 50,000 patients a year across seven locations. Prior to her time at Esperanza, Carmen worked as a research nurse at the UIC School of Public Health, where she managed multiple federally funded, community-based research grants. Carmen currently serves on several advisory and governing boards including the City of Chicago's Board of Health, Firebird Community Arts in Garfield Park, and Open Center for the Arts in Little Village. She received her bachelor's degree in nursing and master's of public health from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is an alumna of the University of Chicago's Civic Leadership Academy. Carmen was born and raised on the southwest side of Chicago and is fluent in Spanish. In her spare time, she loves to create floral arrangements, listen to fun music and is always in search of a good hiking trail.