Pamela Hess

Roles: Special Guest

A career national security journalist, Pam covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2002 to 2007. After a brief foray into national politics as a communications director on Capitol Hill, Pam returned to her first love: food and sustainable farming. In 2011, she took the helm of a local food and wine magazine that celebrated the sustainable food movement in the Capitol Foodshed, and in the course of it, met and fell for Arcadia. Since joining Arcadia in 2013, Pam has led Arcadia’s launch of the Veteran Farmer, the doubling of the Mobile Market fleet and a 300 percent increase in sales; and the expansion of field trips, farm camp, and other educational programs. Pam has also overseen the creation and introduction of a custom data-gathering point of sale app now in use by 10 other mobile and farmers’ markets around the country. The Arcadia Farmers Register produces previously unavailable data and insights into how low-income households use SNAP, WIC and Senior FMNP nutrition benefits to feed their families. This data is then used to design, implement and measure the impacts of programs to increase the sales of nutrition-dense foods. Pam was a plenary speaker at the USDA’s 2016 Transforming Agriculture conference.