Cultivate Kansas City : About Us : Who We Are

Cultivate Kansas City Staff

Cathy Bylinowski, Program Manager - Juniper Gardens Training Farm, cathyb[at]cultivatekc.org, 913-602-1181

Cathy began her horticulture career when she moved to Kansas City from St. Louis and worked for the Missouri Extension Service and Kansas City Community Gardens. In addition, she was gardener at the Land Institute's Rural Community Project in Matfield Green, KS. Cathy also has experience with a community-supported agriculture project at Heartland Farm in Great Bend, KS. Cathy has a degree in English Literature from Washington University in St. Louis and spent time studying art at KU. Since finishing an M.S. in Horticulture at K-State in 2001, Cathy worked as an environmental educator for the Missouri Department of Conservation in the Discovery Center’s native plant workshop and has been involved in rain garden development and storm water management.
Sam Davis, Site Manager - Juniper Gardens Training Farm, sam[at]cultivatekc.org, 913-952-4400

As a kid, Sam’s family did share cropping throughout Arkansas before moving to Kansas. They always had a garden on the side of the house, so Sam learned about agriculture from his family. When he retired from work as a millwright, Sam started gardening again at his house. A friend liked what he was doing and asked him to help her out gardening at the Juniper Gardens Training Farm. Sam started hanging around during the first year of the program in 2008, and he liked the people and the program. People recognized his skills and asked him to do projects, at first as a volunteer and now as staff. Sam has his own plot in the community gardens at the Juniper Gardens Training Farm, which is a family project. His children and grandchildren are all involved in helping him grow and eat the food. His favorite part of the work is designing it – solving the problems of water drainage, figuring out how to make the soil generate better, among challenges. And, of course, he loves all the food he grows. “The garden keeps me alive because it gives me something to do. It keeps the body moving along with the mind at the same time.”
Alicia Ellingsworth, Farm Manager - Gibbs Road Community Farm, alicia[at]cultivatekc.org , 913-991-2595

As Farm Manager, Alica leads and learns from the summer crew of four apprentice farmers and many dedicated volunteers. Alicia’s initial farming experience was as child growing up in rural southern Indiana. Her family had a large vegetable garden and her friends were melon farmers. Before coming to Kansas City, Alicia worked for five years on an eco-justice farm in Indiana that explored the biodynamic approach to growing; it was there that Alicia also learned beekeeping and alpaca herd husbandry. Alicia has a B.A. in Sociology from Ohio State University. Her path is one of service and community building and she believes that working together in the soil we meet ourselves, our neighbors and create a better future for all. Her daughter, eight-year old, Evangeline, is her inspiration and constant companion both on and off the farm.
Jill Erickson, Development Director, jill[at]cultivatekc.org , 913-601-5005

Jill moved to Kansas City in 1995 and has been working and volunteering for nonprofit organizations for the past 15 years. She has experience as small-business owner and in 2007, she spent a season working at the KC Community Farm as an apprentice. Jill is a Missouri Master Naturalist and volunteers through that program with numerous conservation and environmental groups in town. She is very passionate about making the Kansas City region a sustainable, thriving community for all of us and believes this will only happen through grassroots efforts of people who care about the places they live, work and play. A wife and mother of two young children, she enjoys gardening, reading, writing and exploring the wild places around Kansas City.
Ami Freeberg, Community Outreach Coordinator, ami[at]cultivatekc.org , 913-944-5639

Ami began her career in food and agriculture as a young girl terrorizing her mother’s garden. As a kid, her mom tricked her into thinking that cucumbers from the garden were candy, and Ami has been a believer that fresh food is fundamental to health and well-being ever since (and more delicious than candy). In her teenage years, she helped her family run a café at the Fairfield, Iowa farmers’ market, cooking and selling delicious meals with local produce every week. While studying at Grinnell College, she twisted her Sociology major and Global Development Studies concentration to focus on food systems as much as possible. She completed an internship with Cultivate Kansas City in the summer of 2008, where she primarily worked with the New Roots for Refugees program in its first year. That summer she became intrigued by the idea of creating thriving communities around food, so returned to Kansas City after her graduation to continue this work.
Katherine Kelly, Executive Director, Co-Founder, katherine[at]cultivatekc.org, 913-515-2426

Katherine grew up working on her neighbor’s row crop and livestock farm outside of Wichita and became a backyard and community gardener when she moved to the Twin Cities and then Boston in the eighties and early nineties. She started her farming career as a field worker on organic farms in 1991 in the Boston area. She moved back to the Midwest in late 1996, where she started and ran Full Circle Farm for eight years. In 2005, she co-founded the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture, now Cultivate Kansas City. She has worked professionally since the early 1980s with grass roots community organizations in the Twin Cities, Boston, and Kansas City, doing program management, fundraising, marketing, financial management, and organizational development consulting. She co-founded the Growing Growers Training Program and the Farmers Community Market at Brookside.
Teresa Kelly, Get Growing KC Team Member, teresa[at]cultivatekc.org, 913-944-7655

Teresa Kelly has extensive experience operating market gardens, horticulture research projects, selling retail at a farmer’s market and wholesale in Montana before she moved to Kansas City. She recently co-founded My City Hens, after successfully leading the way the way to the creation of a special permit for the keeping of backyard hens in the city of Roeland Park, KS. Her organization now offers workshops, one-on-one advice and codes guidance to home-scale chicken owners across the metro area. She also serves on the Roeland Park Sustainability Committee.
Sherri Harvel, Get Growing KC Team Member, sherri[at]cultivatekc.org, 913-713-9264

Sherri Harvel began her life as a grower in Guinotte Manor, where someone knocked on her door and asked her if she’d like to be part of the neighborhood garden. The first season, she and her children grew the vegetables they were familiar with- tomatoes, beans, and other vegetables. Growing her own vegetables had an immediate impact- they were eating fresh vegetables and saving money on produce. Her whole family benefited, she shared her vegetables with her grandmother, mother, and other relatives. The following season she joined Kansas City Community Gardens and grew in first one, then two plots. As her yields grew, she began to sell the excess produce, and she connected with Cultivate KC (formerly, KC Center for Urban Agriculture) and began to aspire to running her own farm and growing more food.

Root Deep Urban Farm started in the fall of 2005 with the purchase of several vacant lots located in east Kansas City. She now sells at the Westport Farmers Market, through a small CSA, and she works part-time for Cultivate KC as a Get Growing KC team member, helping others become growers.
Steve Mann, Site Developer, steve[at]cultivatekc.org, 816-352-9213

Steve planted his first garden behind his dad’s barbershop when he was eight years old. He learned organic gardening techniques working at the Common Market Cooperative’s gardens in 1971 while attending college in Denver. After over 30 years in construction, engineering and business systems analysis, Steve returned to his roots as an urban farmer at Platte Prairie Farm. Steve is a gardening educator with Food Not Lawns Kansas City and does sustainable agriculture consulting through his business, Prairie Ecosystems Management.
Janet Moss, 2013 Urban Grown Farms & Gardens Tour Coordinator, janetbridgeworks[at]sbcglobal.net

Cultivating Kansas City has contracted with Janet Brown Moss to coordinate the Urban Farms and Gardens Tours since 2007. She delights in motivating people to action, encouraging empowerment of themselves and the systems of which they are a part. Janet’s skills are offered through her company, BridgeWorks...Helping Us Relate And Communicate Across Lines Of Difference…To Make A Difference. BridgeWorks has coordinated a variety of projects and events in the area, one of which was the Congregational Partners Program, assisting congregations of different denominations, faiths and ethnicity to build relationships of trust and unite to serve our metropolitan community. One of those partnerships now grows a garden together and has been on two of the tours. What goes around grows around!
PJ Quell and Larry Davis, Volunteers Extraordinaire We had our ah ha moment 15 years ago, watching my brother-in-law eat fresh fruit, but never without peeling it. It was our first inkling of pesticides, preservatives, and irradiation, with the realization that far off corporate farms filled our stomachs but did not nurture us with quality food. So we eagerly shopped at Wild Oats until we attended the first farmer’s expo in the 90’s. Ah ha again! Local food trumps organic trucked in from afar. We began shopping at the Barstow Market, and along with fresh produce, was a flyer to pull weeds at Full Circle Farm. That stirred in me (PJ) a longing to get my hands in the dirt. I came, I weeded, I realized I was too old for field work! But I was convinced that eating mindfully could change me and the world. When the Center for Urban Agriculture organized, we saw it could restore this relationship with our food that seems to have vanished. Long story short, we are 100% committed to helping the organization, now Cultivate Kansas City, succeed.
Evangeline Ellingsworth, Resident Artist Evangeline Ellingsworth is the eight-year old daughter of our farm manager. She is in second grade at Community School #1. Evangeline is the mother of one dog and the two farm cats, Coco and Cody, and the little sister of another dog and a cat. She likes to climb trees and haystacks at the farm. When inside she is always busy doing artwork and especially loves to draw. Springtime markets are her favorite thing. Her favorite vegetable is carrots. Come to the farm and she’ll show you around.
Walter, farm dog Walter arrived at 4223 Gibbs Road in 2001, trotting up the driveway looking all puppyish and lost. He had his name by the time he got to Katherine, he was snagged up and has been her dog and the farm dog ever since. His job at the farm entails chasing and catching and eating rabbits, squirrels, and the occasional groundhog, playing with Black Dog, his best friend from across the street, bringing in unbelievable smells from whatever he last rolled in, and checking out every farm visitor.

Board of Directors

David André, Attorney & Counselor at Law 2012-2013
Jennifer Cawley, VP Account Director, Barkley 2013-2014
Ray Domino, Controller reStart, Inc. 2012-2013
Allison Harding, Community Volunteer, RJ Kool Company 2013-2014
Shannon Hoffmann, Owner, GreenAcres Market 2012-2013
Treasurer, Finance & Operations Committee Chair
Robin Maiale, Community Volunteer, CSA Member 2013-2014
Secretary, Fundraising Committee Chair
Donnie Morehouse, Organizing Director, Missouri Jobs with Justice 2012-2013
Don Nelson, Community Volunteer 2013-2014
Compliance Officer
Cary Rivard, Fruit & Vegetable Extension Specialist Kansas State University Horticulture Research & Extension Center 2012-2013
Joann Schwarberg, Owner, Joann Schwarberg Landscaping 2013-2014
David Smith, Chief of Staff, Kansas City, KS Public Schools 2012-2013
Marketing Committee Chair
Jake Wagner, Associate Professor, UMKC, Department of Architecture, Urban Planning & Design 2012-2013
Gwen Wurst, Community Volunteer, CSA Member 2012-2013
Board Chair
Tina Wurth, Extension Educator, Lincoln University 2012-2013

Founding Board Members, 2005-2007

Chair, Tina Hoover, Community Volunteer
Secretary, Edward Carey, K-State Research & Extension, Vegetable Specialist
Treasurer, Sherri Harvel, Farmer/Owner Root Deep Urban Farm Kansas City, MO
John Kaiahua, Farmer/Owner J&J Produce, retired military, Raytown, MO
Kwang Kim, Farmer, Olathe, KS
Howard Lotven, Attorney
Lisa Markely, Nutritionist, Health Educator
Beverly Pender, Farmer/Owner, Soul & Soil Rainbow Gardens, KCK
Julie Xiong, Girls Scouts, KCK Greenmarket Director

Founding staff

Katherine Kelly, formerly owner of Full Circle Farm, a Kansas City, KS urban farm

Daniel Dermitzel, co-founder, former Associate Director.
Daniel co-founded the organization in 2005 and resigned in 2012 to pursue his interests in sustainability, agriculture, and urban planning in other settings. Daniel was a key leader in the organization, using his unique set of skills as a farmer, urban planner, educator, and editor. We know that he will be an asset to whatever roles he takes on next in his life and are grateful for the passion, skills, and energy he has shared with Cultivate Kansas City and the urban agriculture community. He can be reached at stadtbauer@gmail.com.