About

Dr. Jennifer Cadenhead, PhD, RDN, is the Executive Director for the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy and Research Assistant Professor, Program in Nutrition, in the Department of Health and Behavioral Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to serving as Executive Director she was the Center’s Goldberg Postdoctoral Scholar, Food Trauma in Children. She also has spent over 20 years volunteering, fundraising, and serving on the boards of numerous community non-profits, including the local school wellness committee, school garden, and food pantry, along with over a dozen years as an actuarial consultant, honing her database and financial skills. She decided to pursue nutrition after a health scare required a nuanced understanding of food to restore her own wellbeing. Dr. Cadenhead focuses on using large data and qualitative methods to study the impact of federal and local government food policies on children’s health and nutrition security. Her work’s primary aim is to understand and improve access to healthy and culturally acceptable foods for all people, particularly children from underserved groups. Dr. Cadenhead also studies the relationship between diet quality, ultra-processed food consumption, and health, including in individuals surviving cancer. She received her B.S. degree in mathematics and sociology from Duke University. She obtained clinical training at a variety of institutions including New York Presbyterian Hospital and research training at Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. She completed her 1,200 hr dietetic internship, as well as received her M.S., MPhil, and PhD degrees in behavioral nutrition with a specialization in nutritional epidemiology, from Teachers College, Columbia University. She lives with her family outside of New York City.

Dr. Pam Koch is the Faculty Director for the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy and Mary Swartz Rose Associate Professor of Nutrition and Education in the Program in Nutrition at Teachers College, Columbia University. Prior to her current role, she help to found the Center with Emerita Professor, Dr. Isobel Contento. Dr. Koch conducts research about the connections between a just, sustainable food system and healthy eating. She translates the results from her research into useful resources such as curricula for schoolteachers and recommendations for policy makers. Pam is the primary author of the three Linking Food and the Environment (LiFE) curriculum series books: Growing Food; Farm to Table & Beyond; and Choice, Control & Change and responsible for coordinating the development, evaluation, and dissemination of the curriculum. Pam frequently speaks about nutrition education and sustainable food systems at meetings and conferences across the country. Pam also collaborates with groups conducting food and nutrition education and working to increase access to healthy, sustainable food across New York City. She completed her BS and MS degrees in nutrition at Rutgers University, The State University of New Jersey, and her EdD and RD from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Faculty Bio

Dr. Randi Wolf, Director, Program in Nutrition, is the Associate Professor of Human Nutrition on the Ella McCollum Vahlteich Endowment. Her research focuses on celiac disease, with a specific interest in the utility of behaviorally-focused interventions to promote healthy dietary patterns and quality of life in children and adults. Randi's research also focuses on the development and validation of novel ways to assess diet, with specific interest in measuring school lunch consumption (K-12) using digital photography, observation, and survey methods, as well as measuring diet in pre-school age children at high risk for early childhood caries. Randi has a PhD in Nutritional Epidemiology and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Pittsburgh and a BS from Cornell University. 

Faculty Bio

Dr. Isobel Contento, Emerita Faculty Director of the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy was formerly the Mary Swartz Rose Professor of Nutrition Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and Director, Program in Nutrition. She retired from Teachers College in Spring 2022. She helped to found the Center with Dr. Pam Koch. Her degrees include a BSc (Hons) from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research has focused on factors influencing food choices, particularly among children and adolescents, and the development and evaluation of school-based programs that link science education and nutrition literacy to an understanding of food and food systems. She is particularly interested in the use of theory and research evidence to design and evaluate nutrition education programs and the intersection of education and policy. Isobel has been active in the Society for Nutrition Education and Behavior for many years and a member of several national advisory committees, including the committee of the Institute of Medicine that produced Nutritional Standards for Food in Schools and the Technical Expert Collaborative of the USDA Evidence Library for Nutrition Education. She has published numerous articles and book chapters, and has served on the editorial boards of several journals. The third edition of her textbook, Nutrition Education, Linking Research, Theory and Practice was published in August, 2015. 

Faculty Bio

Andrew is the Food Ed Hub Director at the Tisch Food Center, where he partners with food education organizations and other stakeholders across New York City to support collaboration, coordination, and policy advocacy. He began his career leading environmental education and school garden programming in elementary schools, and since then has studied and worked in community development, agriculture, and food access and education in the U.S. and abroad. Prior to joining the Tisch Food Center, Andrew was the New York Program Director with FoodCorps, where he led their direct service program in schools and participated in the policy and advocacy work of the Food Ed Coalition. He has an M.S. in Agroecology and an M.S. in Horticulture from The University of Wisconsin—Madison. 

Dr. OreOluwa Badaki is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Teachers College, Columbia University.  Bridging research in critical literacy studies, multimodal scholarship, and environmental justice, she examines how power moves through bodies and spaces within food and land systems. As a writer, movement practitioner, and educator, Dr. Badaki works with youth and communities to explore environmental justice through the creative and performing arts. She earned her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, where her dissertation on the creative literacy practices of youth of color working in urban agriculture received the Ralph C. Preston Award for Scholarship and Teaching Contributing to Social Justice. Prior to her doctoral work, Dr. Badaki was a middle school Language Arts teacher and an education researcher with the United Nations, focusing on Education for Sustainable Development and the Cultural and Creative Industries. Dr. Badaki’s current projects focus on embodied understandings of place and center African diasporic experiences with food and land.

Stephanie is the Food Ed Hub Program Specialist at the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy, merging her work in nutrition and garden-based education with her passion for connecting learning communities to healthy, nourishing, and culturally responsive resources. A native daughter of Hawai’i, Stephanie is committed to fortifying local food systems, protecting biodiversity and creating space for intergenerational knowledge exchange. Her current research centers on food education access in New York City and her other research interests include climate change education, indigenous education pedagogy and network relationality. Stephanie holds an MA in International Education Development from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Amanda is a Tisch Scholar at the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy and a doctoral candidate in Behavioral Nutrition at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests include food decision-making, behavioral nudges, and nutrition literacy. Amanda received a Master of Science in Nutritional Science from Arizona State University in 2020 and a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and Dietetics from the American University of Beirut in 2012. She has experience in community and clinical nutrition in the United States and Lebanon.

Natalie Greaves-Peters, MS, RDN, is a Food Ed Scholar at the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy and doctoral candidate in Behavioral Nutrition at Teachers College, Columbia University. Through her nutrition education, cooking, and gardening work with children and families living in socioeconomically-challenged NYC communities, Natalie developed a passion for food advocacy.  She is interested in research related to diet-related health disparities in underserved communities and passionate about positively impacting community food choice, increasing awareness of healthy eating, and food justice.

Sandra is a Food Ed Scholar at the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy and a first-year doctoral student in Behavioral Nutrition at Teachers College and the Food Ed Newsletter Editor at Tisch Food Center. She is from Lebanon, Beirut, and holds a B.S. in Human Nutrition and Dietetics and a Masters in Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. Sandra has demonstrated experience in the Dietetic and Research fields. Additionally, she worked for two years in the humanitarian field within the Food Security sector. Sandra's primary research interest includes Emergency School Feeding Programs in Low to Middle-income contexts. 

Yibing is a Tisch Scholar at the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy and a first-year doctoral student in Behavioral Nutrition at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is originally from Henan, China. Yibing received a Master of Science in Nutrition from Case Western Reserve University and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from Fordham University. She recently completed her Dietetic Internship with Cornell University and is excited to be credentialed as a registered dietitian. Yibing’s research interests include but are not limited to the formation of dietary patterns, environmental influences, and how to translate nutrition interventions and programs into policy on a broader scale.

Nadia is the Communications Assistant at the Laurie M. Tisch Center for Food, Education and Policy and is a second-year master student in the MS+RDN program at Teacher’s College, Columbia University. She is originally from Sydney, Australia but moved with her family to Denver, Colorado before she moved to New York City. Nadia received her Bachelor of Science in Public Health from Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. She is interested in being involved in the media and helping people when she becomes a future Registered Dietitian. Her research interests include but are not limited to nutrition policy and interventions around early childhood caries, school menus, eating disorders, allergies and clinical nutrition.