The WooFood Team
Interested in getting involved with WooFood? There are endless opportunities to contribute! Email info@woofood.org with your Name, background, how you found out about WooFood, and how you might like to get involved. In the meantime, see some of our amazing volunteers below!
Cara Lyons
WooFood Photographer, Certification Specialist
WooFood Photographer, Certification Specialist
Cara Lyons is a local food blogger and author of Cara’s Cravings, a food blog dedicated to indulgent recipes for healthy living. Cara has found that the key to maintaining a healthy lifestyle is spinning her passionate love of all foods and cooking into enticing, wholesome recipes featuring clean and nutritious ingredients. She has proven to herself and those around her that healthy food is far from boring. On the contrary, it can be rich, interesting, and unexpectedly delicious. In addition to her blog, her original recipes can also be found in Clean Eating Magazine. Cara's cooking style can also be described as "inclusive", meaning, she enjoys dabbling in gluten-free, vegan, and other specialty diets, so that more people can enjoy her recipes. Cara is excited to help bring local Worcester residents healthier - but still delicious - food choices by working with WooFood. She lives in Worcester with her husband, Ben, and black lab beagle mix, Eve.
Laura Newstein
Lead Certification Specialist
Lead Certification Specialist
Laura Newstein grew up in Scituate, MA and lives with her husband and two teenagers in Westborough, MA. Ms. Newstein attended Wheaton College graduating with a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Anthropology, and Brown University where she earned a MA in Social Cultural Anthropology. Through volunteer efforts with the Worcester District Medical Society Alliance, Ms. Newstein has worked as a public health advocate for combating obesity in children. She is now one of WooFood's most active Certification Specialists working enthusiastically with restaurants to guide them through the WooFood Certification process.
Emmy Smith
UMass Medical School
Certification Specialist, Recruitment Coordinator
UMass Medical School
Certification Specialist, Recruitment Coordinator
Emmy grew up in Hadley, MA and is a second year medical student at UMass Medical School. She majored in neuroscience at Barnard College and received an MPH in epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. As a public health student, she became interested in how social and environmental factors influence individuals’ health choices. Additionally, as she watched New York City’s efforts to pass a number of controversial health policies (such as the most recent attempt to ban large-size sodas), she realized that limiting choice is not the best way to get people to eat healthier. Upon arriving at UMass, Emmy was drawn to WooFood’s philosophy, which is “not to restrict choice, but to make the healthy choice the easy choice.” She believes that this is an innovative and refreshing approach to improving people’s health, and she is very excited to be a part of it.
Gabbie Li
MASS Art
WooFood Artist
MASS Art
WooFood Artist
Gabbie Li is from Marlborough, MA. She is an artist studying glass and printmaking at MASS Art with respect to a simplistic and practical approach to her work in order to sustain a fluidity of elemental objectives within her ideas. Her involvement in WooFood serves as a collective of interaction between art and design and public health, and her natural tendency to evoke the raw and gestural intricacies of a subject or surrounding. Gabbie became passionate about food policy after taking a class on the subject at MASS Art. She is the artist behind the official WooFood Logo.
Jack DeWolf
John DeWolf graduated from Endicott College in 2006 with a Bachelor of Science in Communication and a concentration of Advertising. While there he completed an internship with Health Leads USA, a nonprofit that connects low income patients and their families with the basic resources they need to be healthy. His time at Health Leads USA gave him an appreciation for the impact a nonprofit can have on its community, which he carries over into WooFood. WooFood gives him the opportunity to combine his commitment to healthy living, his passion for grass roots activism, and his experience with promotion in the digital arena.
Saby Sarkar
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Certification Specialist
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Certification Specialist
Saby, a Physics Professor at WPI has a passion for diverse foods. He shares many of the same values as WooFood and is getting started as a Certification Specialist. Although WooFood has not yet found a way to incorporate Saby's research in Sensor technology into WooFood, he's been a valuable asset. As WPI's website states, "most people who know Professor Sarkar address him as “Saby” and know his love of travel, food, and feeding people."
