Co-Founder — Distribution Operations
Charlotte Carter
Director, Coxsackie Area Food Pantry
Directs the Coalition’s localized distribution, connecting regional agricultural surplus with community need across the river towns of Greene County.
Leadership
Four co-founders, one coalition.
GCFSC was built by four people from four different worlds — pantry operations, mountaintop community care, the client-choice model, and critical-infrastructure strategy. They lead as equals, and no single voice speaks for the coalition alone.
A collective leadership model
The Coalition is deliberately structured so that operations, community care, governance, and strategy carry equal weight. Each co-founder anchors a different part of the food system, and the coalition's decisions belong to all of them together. The profiles below are presented in the founding order, with the same template and the same prominence for every member.
Co-Founder — Mountaintop Communities & Governance
Jonathan Gross
President, Mountain Top Cares Coalition; Chairman, Greene County Board of Ethics
Brings decades of executive and public-service experience to the Coalition’s work at the intersection of public health, ethical governance, and rural resource distribution.
Co-Founder — Client-Choice Model
Neva Wartell
Executive Director, Catskill Food Pantry
Pioneered the region’s only client-choice pantry model — a dignity-first, waste-reducing approach that anchors the Coalition’s standard of care.
Co-Founder — Critical Infrastructure Strategy
Christopher Braccia
National security and critical infrastructure researcher; Fellow, USTelecom
Applies critical-infrastructure risk-management frameworks to Greene County’s food systems and directs the Coalition’s Sector 02 Fellowship.
Affiliations listed for individual coalition members are provided for context only and do not indicate endorsement of GCFSC by any employer, association, or government agency. GCFSC is an independent community coalition.