Staff & Board

Darnell Adams is a Boston-based certified leadership coach, facilitator, and strategist with over two decades of experience with non-profit, for profit and cooperative businesses. She has been recognized by Boston Magazine as a “Thought Leader” and part of “Boston’s new power class: the visionaries, idealists and thinkers among us whose insights are transforming the way we live, work, learn, play”. Darnell is a developer and facilitator of strategic plans, special projects and workshops, and provides expertise and training on an array of topics including transformational leadership and understanding bias and power.

Darnell holds a Master of Education from Harvard University. Darnell is the President and co-owner of Firebrand Cooperative, a women-owned worker cooperative specializing in change management for mission-driven organizations.

Anne is the Senior Program Manager for the Healthy Food Financing Initiative at Reinvestment Fund, a national initiative to improve access to healthy food in underserved rural and urban areas, to create and preserve quality jobs, and to revitalize low-income communities. She has been engaged with cooperatives for over 15 years, including being on the boards of a student co-op association and a number of food co-ops in Philadelphia and Denver. She helped found two co-op support organizations, The Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance and the Center for Community Wealth building in Denver. Anne also has experience as an entrepreneur, federal grant writer for food systems and economic development organizations, small business lender, and community organizer. She is passionate about creating community-led solutions to achieve racial and economic justice and food sovereignty.

Val has 30+ years of experience in the profit, not-for-profit and NGO industries in domestic and global operations, she developed extensive expertise in international development across Africa,Asia, Central America, Eurasia, and the Middle East. She is recognized for competence in financial management, government contract acquisition, government contract accounting, program management, compliance, and capacity building. She has strong leadership, business and financial acumen, and has a visionary approach to strategic thinking.

Val serves on the Board of Rochdale Capital which provides financing and technical assistance to cooperative businesses and other community-based organizations. She serves as Chair of the Cooperative Business International, Inc. (CBI Global) Board who work with coffee and spice producers in S.E. Asia and combine production partnerships with social responsibility and sustainability.

Jamila Medley is a consultant who brings facilitation expertise to highly participatory processes which support organizations and their stakeholders with change management, leadership development, governance, DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) efforts, and participatory management.

From 2012-2021 Jamila served in governance roles and then as executive director of the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance (PACA). At PACA, she partnered with stakeholders to position cooperatively owned enterprises as a robust and equitable economic development solution to economic and racial injustice in the Philadelphia region.

Jamila holds a M.S. degree in Organizational Dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania and earned her B.A. degree in Urban Studies from Connecticut College. She serves on the boards of directors for the Food Co-op Initiative, Independence Public Media Foundation, Movement Alliance Project, and All Together Now PA.

Steve Cooke has been the General Manager of Friendly City Food Co-op since August of 2010. He came back to the Shenandoah Valley to be part of the start-up team there and apply all of the experience, skills, and local food system building tools he acquired as GM of Sevananda Natural Foods Market in Atlanta, GA, where he worked for 16 years. Steve has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Journalism from James Madison University in Harrisonburg. Steve likes to say that he “has a degree in Political Science and Communications, and that’s why he runs a food co-op,” tying the politics of food, and the building of strong community relationships.

Richard has been a passionate supporter of and participant in co-ops since living in a student housing co-op at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in the ’80s. He worked for the National Cooperative Business Association for 11 years before moving to the National Cooperative Bank to lead the launch of the Food Co-op 500 (which evolved into the Food Co-op Initiative). He has now been on the staff of the Credit Union National Association for 12 years, where he works to promote awareness of credit unions as a better choice for consumers.

Gerardo has served as executive director of LEAF for the last five years, spearheading the Fund’s move into retail food co-ops and healthy food financing. He joined LEAF after spending many years in the commercial banking and investment management field. His background includes ten years as a Vice President at First National Bank of Chicago, and 15 years in investment management in the positions of Portfolio Manager and Senior Vice President with Baring Asset Management and John Hancock funds. He has a master’s degree in Economics from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

John advises NCG member co-ops on the planning and implementation of store reinvestment, relocations, and new store projects. John has over 17 years of experience in retail real estate development and asset management with expertise in market & financial analysis, lease negotiation, program development, and portfolio management. He joined NCG in 2015.

Rich has spent his life championing the cooperative business model. During a 40-year electric cooperative career including nearly a decade with the federal Rural Electrification Administration (REA) and later senior leadership posts with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (CFC), he demonstrated his passion for helping cooperative consumers by fighting to improve the quality of rural life.

Since retiring from CFC, Rich has been a key player in the formation of the Fredericksburg Food Cooperative in Fredericksburg, VA, serving in various capacities including board chair, vice chair and treasurer. He chairs the Cooperative Development Foundation and has been an Adjunct Instructor on cooperative business at the University of Mary Washington.

amaha is a peacebuilder, social healer, freedom fighter, network weaver, and lover of humanity.  He is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Applied Social Issues at Sinclair Community College in Dayton Ohio. amaha is a practitioner-scholar dedicated to building bridges of trust, healing historical wounds, and harnessing the unique gifts and talents of every human being as we press towards a just and equitable society.  As the former chair of the Dayton Human Relations Council Board, his areas of interest include health and education equity, praxis, dismantling structural violence, and getting the voice of marginalized communities into the center of public policy to emerge structures of belonging that acknowledge the dignity and worth of every human being.  He is co-founder and board chair of the Gem City Market, a community-driven effort to address food apartheid through a food coop dedicated to increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables within west Dayton. He is also co-founder of West Dayton Strong an afterschool/summer program in Desoto Bass public housing that is focused on math and reading development utilizing a S.T.E.A.M. curriculum. Currently, he is working towards his Ph. D. in Sociology at the University of Cincinnati with an emphasis on utilizing community-based participatory research (CBPR) towards emerging health equity and community transformation.

Jeanie Wells has served more than 25 years in the independent grocery sector. First, she was general manager and CEO at Community Mercantile Co-op for more than 10 years, overseeing many expansions and a decade of exponential growth. For the past nearly 15 years, she has served as a national organizational development and retail planning specialist. She serves on many board and advisory committees related to the development and strengthening of locally controlled grocery stores.

At Columinate, Jeanie focuses on operational improvement and planning, organizational capacity planning, store conditioning, driving local impact through retail excellence and leadership development and coaching. She has worked with more than 125 different community focused retail grocery stores across the US and Canada. In recent years, she has been working toward her certification in interior design to enhance her store planning and design skills.

In addition to her work as a consultant, she is a trusted adviser to many national grocery organizations. And in 2022, she founded the new grocery store leadership program, Mighty Community Markets, designed to teach critical management skills to locally controlled independent grocery stores of all kinds, locations, and sizes.