The Anna Tasca Lanza Foundation
Board of Directors
Stewardship of the Foundation mission.
As directors of a California nonprofit public benefit corporation, the Board of Directors carries the legal and fiduciary responsibility for the Foundation: approving the annual budget, overseeing how donations are held and distributed, setting the terms of scholarships, and holding the organization to its long-term direction.
That direction is an ambitious one. Cook the Farm began at Case Vecchie in rural Sicily and is now the model for programs in Sicily, Scotland, Sardinia, and Portugal, with more regions in development. It is the Foundation's aim for this way of teaching to become a benchmark for food culture, sustainability, and experiential learning.It falls to the Anna Tasca Lanza Foundation and its Board of Directors to weigh Foundation responsibilities and proposals against very important questions: who are the farmers, artisans, educators, and cooks whose knowledge we are asking to learn from, what do they receive in return, are we helping to sustain a living food system, and how do we all come away more connected?
The Board also builds and holds relationships the Foundation depends on, with ambassadors, supporters, partners, and everyone who believes food is capable of creating understanding across cultures, generations, and communities. It commits to transparency in how funding is dispersed. Donations are held in a dedicated account and directed toward scholarships, public programming, educational content, and program infrastructure, and the Board is accountable for that distribution.
WHEN YOU SUPPORT YOU SUSTAIN
All donations are held in a dedicated account and directly support the Foundation through scholarships for Cook the Farm, public programming, educational content, and program infrastructure. We are committed to transparency in how funds are distributed, ensuring that each contribution meaningfully supports access, learning, and community.
Kellie Krug
Board Chair
Growing up in Northern California, Kellie was surrounded by an extended family and the rich traditions of her grandparents. Her fondest memories are rooted in their backyards, where they grew fruit, cultivated vegetables, and composted by the kitchen sink. Harvest season was a family affair; they gathered to pick fruit, make preserves, and can tomatoes, eventually coming together to enjoy the food and wine her grandparents crafted by hand.
Today, Kellie carries those traditions forward in her own vibrant garden, working with wildflowers and native herbs. Beyond the garden, she explores fermentation, cooking, and wine. For Kellie, food is a vehicle for community, storytelling, and connection.
This lifelong passion drives her work today as Board Chair for the Anna Tasca Lanza Foundation and the Cook the Farm program. Kellie brings 25 years of marketing and operations experience, including six years at non-profits and seven years as co-chair of the Taproot Foundation board.
Lane Selman
Board Member, Food & Culture
Lane grew up on her family’s citrus farm on Florida’s Space Coast, planted by her Sicilian great-grandparents in 1919. That early connection to farming, food, and her Sicilian heritage has shaped a career spent bringing people together around what we grow and eat. She studied agronomy and entomology at the University of Florida before moving to Oregon in 2000, where her work increasingly drew her toward the relationships between plant breeding, farming, cooking, and flavor.
In 2012, Lane founded the Culinary Breeding Network, creating a space for plant breeders, farmers, chefs, and eaters to come together and take part in the development of new crop varieties. Through tastings, public events, field days, collaborative research, and storytelling, she has worked to make plant breeding more visible and participatory, while putting flavor, biodiversity, and culinary quality at the center of the conversation.
Lane is a Professor of Practice at Oregon State University and coauthor of Radicchio: A Celebration of the Beloved Italian Vegetable, a project that grew from more than a decade of relationships with radicchio farmers, breeders, chefs, and communities in Italy and the United States. Across her work, she is drawn to the people who keep agricultural knowledge alive and to creating opportunities for people to gather, taste, learn, and see food and farming in a new way. She serves as a Food & Culture Board Member of the Anna Tasca Lanza Foundation.
Cara Mangini
Board Member, Food & Culture
Cara has spent her career putting produce at the center of the plate: gathering people around the seasons, honoring the work of our farmers, and supporting the health of our communities. A San Francisco Bay Area native, Cara grew up in a family where food and recipes were inseparable from story and her Italian ancestry—she comes from generations of traditional butchers, a lineage she has carried forward through her work's focus on vegetable education.
She began her career in journalism, then spent years in brand and educational program leadership in the beauty industry, all while immersive, culinary travel drew her into a professional life in food. In 2012, she founded Little Eater a produce-centered restaurant group in Columbus, Ohio, built to spotlight the region's rich agricultural traditions and grown to include Produce & Provisions, a farmstand and artisan food boutique celebrating seasonal ingredients and local growers and makers. Her work earned her recognition as one of the Top 50 Plant-Forward Chefs in the World, and she is the award-winning author of The Vegetable Butcher and The Vegetable Eater cookbooks.
Now home in San Francisco, Cara leads The Vegetable School and Produce Inspired, her Napa Valley-grown olive oil collection. To the Board, she brings her commitment to hands-on learning, her strength in storytelling, and a deep connection to the Foundation's mission.
GET IN TOUCH WITH THE ATL FOUNDATION TEAM
