Portrait of Nicole Civita, a light skinned woman in her early 40s with greying curly hair, two different colored eyes, a sparkly nose stud, and smile wide enough to crinkle her eyes. There is dirt on her nose & red cheeks from digging in the garden

Nicole Civita

is a human, mother, partner, and friend who is preoccupied with the possible and works like hell to bring its most beautiful bits into being. She’s a shapeshifter who has, over the course of her career, taken form as an educator, pracademic, ethicist, attorney, administrator, mentor, author, advocate, and consultant. Often, though not always, she’s focused her work on shaping change in and through the food system. Nicole has propelled projects to drastically reduce food waste, revitalize regional food systems, seek justice for agricultural and food workers, explore ethical dilemmas across the food chain, and develop systems-aware, equity-enhancing laws and policies.

Nicole’s work is grounded in ecological knowledge, influenced by systems thinking, attentive to relationships of care and reciprocity, fueled by radical imagination and aimed at collective liberation. Through this work, she produces guidance, actionable policy, program, and enterprise recommendations, and truth-telling tools that enable moves toward relationship. She has been nationally recognized for her work on food waste and conservation, harnessing the power of food systems to address the climate crisis, and farmworker justice. Yet Nicole is most proud of the rising generation of eco-social change-shapers that she has had the privilege of supporting as an educator and supervisor.

A commitment to informed, change-oriented, interdisciplinary interrogation of the practices, policies, preferences, and values that shape food systems propels Nicole's research. Within the sphere of agri-food studies, many experts urge examination of the food system from farm-to-fork. Nicole has always preferred to think about the food system from ecosystem-through-farm-to-community. Even more conceptually, she imagines a path guided by ethics that leads to relationship.That path can help us navigate toward post-capitalist futures beyond systems of extraction and oppression.

Nicole is also the co-author (with Michelle Auerbach) of a new book: Feeding Each Other: Shaping Change in the Food System Through Relationship.

Nicole has learned at least as much from the communities she serves as she did in pursuit of her degrees. She holds an LL.M. in Agricultural and Food Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law, a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, and an A.B. in American Studies and Creative Writing from Columbia University.

Nicole serves as the Network Weaver & Creative Collaboration Director for EcoGather. In recent years, Nicole was Sterling College’s Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, the founding director of its School of the New American Farmstead and food systems faculty. She has also held appointments as faculty and research scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder, the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, and the University of Arkansas School of Law. Nicole is also a founding co-convener and policy director for Project Protect Food Systems Workers. An integrative lawyer, Nicole is of counsel to Handel Food Law, LLC. She maintains a relational food systems consulting practice: www.plenty-enough.com.