Board of Directors

Robin Greenwald is a FarmSTAND board member and partner at Weitz & Luxenberg, managing the firm’s Environmental Torts and Consumer Class Action Unit. She has litigated environmental cases for the entirety of her 40-year law practice. She has served in lead counsel capacities as a federal environmental civil enforcement attorney and criminal prosecutor, and since entering private practice she has held many lead and plaintiffs’ steering committee positions.     

Robin started her career with the Department of Justice for 16 years, first as Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York and then as Assistant Chief of the Environmental Crimes Section, followed by appointment as General Counsel for the Inspector General, U.S. Department of the Interior.    After 18 years in public service, Robin became the Executive Director of Waterkeeper Alliance, a not-for-profit water protection organization with hundreds of member programs around the world. Subsequently, she was a Clinical Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School.   

Robin joined Weitz & Luxenberg in 2005. She has been co-lead counsel in the Roundup MDL in San Francisco for 6 years and has also litigated many of her Roundup cases in Missouri state courts. She is also co-lead counsel in the Camp Lejeune water litigation in the Eastern District of North Carolina, on behalf of Marines, their families, and civilian workers seeking compensation for injuries from the water at Camp Lejeune. She also was on the Executive Committee of the recently settled JCCP in Los Angeles concerning the methane gas well blow in Porter Ranch, a community in Los Angeles County.

In addition, she has served leadership roles in several other environmental and non-environmental consolidated cases, including the BP Oil Spill Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in New Orleans, the Volkswagen Defeat Device Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee in San Francisco, and co-lead of the MDL against the oil industry for contaminating the nation’s groundwater with a gasoline additive MTBE. 

Frank James recently retired after more than 30 years with Dakota Rural Action (DRA), where he served as staff director. Under his leadership, DRA grew into a leading grassroots  organization protecting environmental resources, advancing resilient agricultural systems, and empowering communities across South Dakota to shape policy and build local leadership. Raised on his family’s cattle and crop farm in northeastern South Dakota, Frank brought firsthand knowledge of the challenges facing rural communities to his lifelong advocacy. He is recognized for his deep commitment to grassroots organizing and sustainable agriculture.

Navina Khanna (she/they) is a FarmSTAND board member and co-founder and the Executive Director of the HEAL (Health, Environment, Agriculture, Labor) Food Alliance, a national coalition whose members represent over 2 million farmers, fishers, food workers, and advocates. For over 20 years, she has organized for social and ecological justice through food and farming systems, and her leadership is widely respected for uniting changemakers across sectors and communities. In their hometown of Oakland, Navina’s worked with local farms, food pantries, corner stores, startups, and schools to increase access to affordable and healthful foods, and brought lessons from that work to her service on Oakland’s Food Policy Council and the Mayor’s Equitable Climate Action Plan committee.

Navina holds an MS in International Agricultural Development and has served on the leadership teams of Urban Tilth, the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, and Friends of the Earth-Action. They are a current Castanea Fellow and a past fellow with the Young Climate Leaders Network. A first-generation South Asian American, Navina’s worldview is shaped by migration and grounded in movement. She most easily finds joy immersed in soil, music, and community. 

While FarmSTAND Board Member Bob Martin will tell you modestly that he’s not an academic or a scientist, his extensive expertise in public policy and knowledge of agriculture, environmental and health issues ultimately brought him to the Center for a Livable Future in 2011, where he was the director of the Food System Policy Program until his retirement in March of 2023.  He now is a senior advisor to the Center. During his years working for members of Congress from the Midwest, Bob gained a knack for strategizing and “bringing the right people together,” he says.    

Previously, Bob worked on Capitol Hill and in a state legislature, as well as for a family farm advocacy group. He also worked for the Pew Charitable Trusts, where he served as a senior officer at the Pew Environment Group following the dissemination of his work as Executive Director of the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production.    Bob worked closely with staff at the Center and other experts from JHSPH on the Commission, which was a joint venture of Pew and JHSPH.  Ultimately, the Commission published eight technical reports and one seminal report entitled “Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America.”   “Food has become the social issue of our time,” he says. “I was lucky enough to participate in an effort to shine a bright spotlight on one aspect of the food system that is in crisis.”   

At the Center, Bob’s role enhanced policy efforts based on research conducted by the Center and other organizations. As the Center has grown substantially in recent years, one of Bob’s responsibilities was to ensure that it takes a coordinated approach to research and policy while optimizing partnerships with colleagues at other organizations. 

Juno Turner is the Litigation Director at Towards Justice, a Denver-based non-profit legal organization that defends workers and their rights through impact litigation and policy advocacy in Colorado and across the country. Juno has represented thousands of workers in class and collective actions challenging wage theft, discrimination, anticompetitive conduct, forced labor, and other abuses of corporate power.

Katherine is a FarmSTAND board member passionate about finding creative ways to connect people to power in the movement for a brighter farm and food future. Before joining Young Farmers, Katherine worked with the Organization for Competitive Markets to engage farmers and ranchers to fight against the ever-increasing corporate interests in the U.S. food system and with the French Institute for Agricultural Research to strengthen national multi-stakeholder networks that could rise to the challenge of developing economically, culturally, and ecologically sustainable livestock systems. 

Before becoming Co-Executive Director at Young Farmers, Katherine was the Organizing & Advocacy Director, where they focused on grassroots leadership development and campaigning for equitable farmland access. They hold a Bachelor’s in American Studies and Biology from Tufts University and a Master’s in Veterinary Public Health from the Royal Veterinary College. Outside of organizing, Katherine works from North Central Washington State (unceded Methow territory) where they run a horse training operation. 

Sarah Vogel is an attorney, advocate, and author of The Farmer’s Lawyer, a memoir about her landmark case Coleman v. Block, which protected 240,000 family farmers from foreclosure during the 1980s farm crisis. She was the first woman in U.S. history elected as a state Commissioner of Agriculture, serving two terms in North Dakota.

Over her career, she has championed the rights of family farmers, women, and Native Americans, including co-leading the class action Keepseagle v. Vilsack, which secured nearly $800 million for Native American farmers and ranchers. She currently serves on the USDA Equity Commission’s Agriculture Subcommittee and chairs Humanities North Dakota. Her book has been nationally recognized, and she has received numerous honors, including the 2022 Sioux Award and the 2023 National Farmers Union Meritorious Service Award. Sarah lives in Bismarck, North Dakota.