Common Ground Food Co-op Board Members

Ben was born in the piney woods of East Texas. He moved to Chicago and accidentally became an international banker, a career that saw him wearing a suit and tie in the City of London for eight years.

Cathe was born in Champaign, spent two decades in Wyoming engaged serially in a variety of pursuits, from teaching at the National Outdoor Leadership School to running a county election office to (fin

Clint has been involved with the co-op since 2000, and has previously served as a Tuesday night coreworker, an outreach liaison at the farmer’s market, a store operations coordinator, a facilitator for coordinator meetings, and a bread baker. Through his role as board chair he hopes to help build a strong and stable future for the co-op, helping to increase the level of empowerment and accountability within our organization in order to create a co-op that can achieve its goals of spreading the joy of good food and cooperation to a larger and more diverse community.

After a stint cooking in a dining co-operative in college (the largest co-op in the state of Ohio at the time!), Laurence joined Common Ground soon after moving here in 1995.

Lisa Bralts-Kelly joined the CGFC board in November 2006 after working on the staff as an Outreach Coordinator for the co-op from March 2005-May 2006. Her family joined the co-op in March of 2005. Lisa describes herself as "a vegetable-growing omnivore!" Her interests in terms of Board work include outreach, fundraising, and marketing, and she would love to see the co-op become an even more important part of our local/regional food system. Lisa currently works for the City of Urbana as an Economic Development Specialist/Market at the Square Director.

Bio coming soon!

Sam is another of those UIUC grads who is happily bound to Urbana-Champaign by some force akin to gravity. Previously, he worked in various aspects of the wine a food industry. Now he mostly eats cheese crackers and applesauce while at home with his, rather opinionated, toddler. His spouse shares the sentiment that little exists to take them away from Historic East Urbana.