Design and sustainability expert Lauren Yarmuth to lead next chapter of impact and action for renowned food and farming nonprofit organization
Lauren Yarmuth, a leading design thinker with expertise in sustainability and food systems, has joined Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture as the nonprofit organization’s new executive director. She will work in partnership with the Stone Barns Center team as well as leadership at Blue Hill, the organization’s on-site restaurant partner, to steward the next chapter of the Center’s impact and development.
Lauren brings nearly two decades of leadership on regenerative systems to this role. Before joining Stone Barns Center she was the Director of Circular Economy at IDEO, the global design company, where she focused on issues such as waste, consumer behaviors, and business and systems innovation. Prior to IDEO Lauren co-founded and ran YR&G (now WSP), a global consulting group with a top-tier list of corporate clients focused on sustainability in the built environment.
As executive director, Lauren will guide the vision of Stone Barns Center. Her portfolio will include developing the capacity of the staff and the campus, as well as the impact of collaborations with restaurant partner Blue Hill and other key stakeholders, to realize the potential of food as a lever to bring about thriving ecosystems.
“We are so pleased to welcome Lauren here as our new executive director,” said Peggy Dulany, Stone Barns Center’s board chair and co-founder. “She embodies all of the values that make our team special: she believes deeply in regenerative systems and the power of food to change the world. Her background and her outlook make her exceptionally well positioned to steward our organization into this next chapter as we deepen our commitment to impact on food systems change in the face of global warming.”
“There is unbelievable potential to leverage the food system and the ways we grow, process, and connect with food to measurably address major global issues such as human health and well-being and climate change” said Lauren Yarmuth. “I am so energized by the challenge and opportunity to serve as Stone Barns Center’s new executive director. It’s incredibly exciting to join an organization that has already done so much to help people literally taste solutions in food and farming and to scale that outward to catalyze the potential of the food system as the center of a thriving future.”
In addition to her work as a designer and consultant, Lauren is a passionate educator and public speaker known for exploring provocative ideas and inviting people to make the issues personal. She cut her teeth at the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, was part of the early leadership of the U.S. Green Building Council, and served as long-standing faculty at Columbia University. Lauren has a degree in architecture from the Rhode Island School of Design.
