Kelly Dettmann
Event Chair

Kelly Dettmann discovered a love of healthy food at an early age -- she grew up in a family with a deep-rooted appreciation for healthy home cooking, and she has since passed on this love to her own children. This year, as chair of HSC's Cooking Up Change, she'll bring that passion for fresh, well-prepared food to more people than ever before.

As a mother, Dettmann knows how important a healthy start can be, for her own children and for every child. Dettmann says: "If we can get all kids healthier and thinking about health, everybody in the world is going to benefit. I am going to benefit from less-advantaged kids getting a healthy meal. I strongly believe that those kids will get a better start in life, and a rising tide raises all boats."

Although this is her first year as event chair, her involvement with HSC began years ago when she started attending workshops with Rochelle Davis, HSC's founding executive director, at the advice of a friend. Slowly her connection to HSC grew, and now she recommends HSC involvement to all.

"Every person I've ever bought to [Cooking Up Change] has walked away stunned and thrilled with the cooking contest and with the resources that HSC brings. I've been really very impressed, it's a tremendous learning experience. HSC can make such a diffference in the lives of your own children or friends' children."

Dettmann says she's learned important lessons from HSC. "I learned where it makes sense to buy organic and how to pack really healthy lunches for my own kids," she says. "I was never the kind of person who bought a lot of fast food, but it made me more aware of what we're eating. And how fast food impacts us as a nation." In order to help her own children make healthy choices, Dettmann says she has an ongoing conversation with her two young children, aged 8 and 10. Instead of a making a drive-through pit-stop for fast food, Dettmann says, "we talk about what else you could eat to get that 1,000 calories."

Beth Aldrich
Host Committee Member and Event Sponsor

Beth Aldrich, a host committee member and owner of Cooking Up Change sponsor Restoring Essence Nutrition, works with Healthy Schools Campaign because she loves spreading the joy of healthy food to others.

A mother of children in grade school, Aldrich says she packs her children's lunches full of nutritious, fresh foods and encourages other parents to do the same. In fact, she says, parents can teach their children to read labels independently and make their own healthy choices. "Look out for hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup!" she says. "Find an alternative that's just as tasty." Kids will listen to their parents, Aldrich says -- it just takes a little work. "All you have to do is show an interest and tell them you're choosing these foods because you care about them," she says. "And then don't buy the stuff. Stick to your guns."

Aldrich became certified in June as an integrative holistic nutrition counselor and then founded Restoring Essence Nutrition. She helps her clients take a big-picture look at their health and wellness.

"For example," she says, "I look at the foods children are eating, the environment that they're in, and how relationships influence them -- in addition to what's on their plate. And my suggestions might not only involve food but also looking at what's going on in their life, incorporating breathing and quiet time."

Her work with HSC combines her beliefs in a healthy lifestyle, nutritious school food and conscientious parenting: "I'm all about nutrition and trying to get nutrition into schools. And I thought HSC would be a positive way to influence other parents about how important their children's nutrition is."

Lisa Gershenson
Cooking Contest Co-Chair

Lisa Gershenson, an experienced chef and this year's co-chair of the Cooking Up Change Healthy Cooking Contest, has been dishing out nutritious meals for more than twenty years.

Her love of good food brought her to Healthy Schools Campaign, where, as co-chair of the Healthy Cooking Contest, she seizes the opportunity to get teens involved in cooking.

"It's a fundraiser that's exciting and increases awareness of the issues," she says. "Kids get really excited about the contest. The contest motivates students because the meal is served throughout the school system, and they love the idea that their meal is served to the Chicago student body."

Her background in healthy cooking began to flourish years ago. From 1988 to 2001, Gershenson and her husband built a catering company from the ground up, which they later sold, leading to an alternate career for Gershenson as a private chef. From there, she began working to integrate healthier lunches into charter schools, serve healthy meals to students in an after-school program and helped to revamp a community kitchen. Throughout her career, she has spread the word that knowledge of nutrition and good food are crucial.

Gershenson, a judge in the cooking contest last year, meets the challenge of instilling healthy habits into teenagers with optimism and a knack for cooking up delicious alternatives to conventional snack food.

"You're not going to scare them into it," Gershonson says. "It's more that well-prepared food that happens to be healthy is just naturally appealing. That's how you've gotta sell it. It's gotta taste good."

Melissa Graham
Host Committee Member and VIP Reception Catering Sponsor

Melissa Graham wants to bring families back to the table -- a table full of organic, seasonal, locally grown foods. Through her work as founder and president of the nonprofit Purple Asparagus, and through her catering company, Monogramme Events and Catering, she's doing just that. Purple Asparagus regularly engages families and the community in educational activities that promote a love of healthy eating. And for this year's Cooking Up Change, Monogramme Events will donate catering for the VIP pre-reception, a meal that will tap into all the goodness of autumn.

"The menu for the VIP reception will include locally sourced foods from Midwest Organic Supply," Graham says. "I take my inspiration from the season, and so while I want the menu to be a surprise, you can bet that it will include fall foods like winter squash, root vegetables, mushrooms and pears."

Graham is passionate about finding delicious foods through a local network of growers and suppliers and says that her love of good food comes from a childhood where homemade dishes were always on the menu. Her work this year as a host committee member helps HSC pass that enthusiasm along to the next generation.

"I'm always inspired by the students' creativity and what they can accomplish with a little encouragement," she says. Find out more about Purple Asparagus at www.purpleasparagus.com or learn about Monogramme Events at www.monogrammeevents.com.

Gary Cuneen, Seven Generations Ahead
Event Sponsor

Gary Cuneen, Founding Executive Director of Seven Generations Ahead, believes that all children deserve to experience the taste of farm-fresh foods, to understand where their food comes from, and to develop healthy eating habits that will benefit them for a lifetime. Cuneen says: "There's a big disconnect between health and food, and between the food we put into our bodies, how it's grown and who grows it. We try to erase that disconnect."

Seven Generations Ahead works hard to bring children from Chicago-area schools into direct contact with locally grown foods and local farmers. That may mean a food tasting, a classroom visit from a local organic famer, or a farm field trip for the whole class. "There's an amazing transformation that takes place," Cuneen says, "when a student who won't eat the broccoli on his plate goes to a farm, sees brocolli growing out of the ground, picks it and eats it -- and then says 'oh, this tastes really good.' That transformation is tangible."

Seven Generations Ahead, a nonprofit organization founded in 2001, advocates for "a world in which commerce, social equality and ecology converge." The organization is a natural supporter and partner in HSC's work, because both organizations strive to help young people make conscious, healthy choices about what they eat. Seven Generations Ahead also supports programs such as school-based gardens, parent-teacher workshops, and more.

These programs, Cuneen says, are designed to "provide a completely different context for the eating of healthy food that makes it fun and exciting --and a much richer experience."