The Team
Gayla Brockman - Executive Director, Menorah Legacy Foundation
Gayla Brockman has served as the Executive Director of the Menorah Legacy Foundation since 2003, working with the Board to transition the Foundation from one that had been hospital-based to an established, community health promotion partner. Prior to relocating to Kansas City in 2002, Gayla spent the previous 15 years working in health promotion and disease prevention in both hospital and corporate health care settings in Boston, Massachusetts. Gayla holds a Bachelor’s of Arts degree from the University of Michigan and a Master’s of Science in Health Care Administration degree from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. The Menorah Legacy Foundation owns and operates the Beans&Greens program.
Katherine Kelly - Executive Director, Kansas City Center of Urban Agriculture
Katherine Kelly began farming by working on vegetable farms as a field worker in 1991 in the Boston area, and 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, a non-profit organization promoting entrepreneurial agriculture in the metropolitan area. She has also 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. Katherine helped bring this program to Kansas City and provides ongoing strategic oversight.
Jenn Brockman - Market Development & Program Messaging
Jenn Brockman is a specialist in strategic planning and end-to-end product and service creation and delivery. Over the past twenty years, Jenn has held roles in strategic planning and consulting, product management and development, product innovation and business development at Sprint, Midwest Research Institute, and AlliedSignal Aerospace. Currently, Jenn is acting as a consultant for the Beans&Greens program facilitating partnership creation and program implementation with farmers’ markets and developing program communications. Jenn holds a Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts from the University of Kansas and a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
Eugene Brown III - Mobile Market
Eugene Brown III has a professional background in human resources development, including working with the Full Employment Council of Kansas City, a non-profit organization that prepares low-income residents for employment. He also worked in human resource capacities at Home Depot, CitiCards, QualStaff Resources and Farmers Insurance Group. In 2010, Eugene joined the Front Porch Alliance to co-lead a farm business development project with area high school students. Recently, Eugene joined Beans&Greens to launch and operate the Mobile Market. Mr. Brown completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Science, Business Administration and Computer Science at Central Methodist University in 1998.