Nora Barquín
Program Instructor: Spanish Language Classes
Nora has a PhD in Biology and a MSW in social work. She has been working at Right From The Start as a Program Coordinator at Family Network since 2002. She helps facilitate the Spanish cooking classes with Nurture. She started cooking when she was eight helping her mom and grandmother in the kitchen. When she came to live in the US she had to learn a different way of cooking with different appliances, spices and time constraints. Nora’s passion for helping people and her joy for cooking make her a very dedicated volunteer for Nurture.
Juliette Pomey Britton
Wellness Consultant
Juliette is pursuing her masters in dietetics at University of Illinois at Chicago. She graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in Community Health Education. She began her career at the University of Michigan’s Project Healthy Schools, a research initiative to combat the prevalence of childhood obesity. Her love for the outdoors encouraged her to take a position in Colorado for Poudre Valley Health System’s Healthy Kids Club. While in Colorado, she worked with local schools to promote healthy living through the integration of curriculum and school policy. She led many after school programs that focused on fitness, nutrition, and fun. Now back in her native state of Illinois, Juliette works part-time for Nurture as a wellness consultant for schools and community organizations. When not working or studying, Juliette can be found running along the lake or at the gym, spinning, swimming and lifting weights. She is most at home in the kitchen, where she loves taking old recipes and reworking them with healthier alternatives. You can follow Juliette’s blog, Wholesome Heart, where she shares her journey in the kitchen (along with some fun facts from the classroom).
Bertha Chávez
Program Instructor: Spanish Language Classes
Bertha was a nurse in her native country Ecuador. Trained as a doula, she facilitates prenatal groups in Spanish at Right From The Start Program in Family Network. She is a very experienced cook. She started cooking when she was a girl helping her mom prepare food for the family. Bertha started taking cooking classes in middle school, and since then she has been learning and making new recipes. Participating in Nurture cooking classes is a perfect fit. For Bertha cooking is and will always be her passion.
Gina Gooden
Program Instructor: Kids Classes
Committee Leader: Community Outreach
Gina was lucky enough to be inspired by two cooks in her family. While her mom cooked for a family of five, Gina also observed her Nonna, “cook Italian”. As a newlywed, Gina has added her own flair and has enjoyed trying out many new recipes. Time is precious, as Gina works full time as Program Coordinator for a local municipality’s Youth & Senior Services; so she is always looking to make tasty, quick and healthy meals for herself and her husband. He loves her cooking! Gina has a teaching background and a Master’s in Clinical Psychology. Gina loves to teach, loves kids, and loves to teach kids to cook.
FiFi Levin
Program Instructor: Kids Classes
Fifi graduated college with a degree in Child Development and Family Relations. Nutrition and eating healthy have always been a significant priority for her and her family. When her kids were young, making sure they were eating healthy foods and teaching them about nutrition was always a priority. A mantra at home was, “ Eat the foods that will fuel your body and keep it running smoothly”. Now they are young adults and to this day Fifi continues to impress upon them not to take their health for granted. Her current saying is, “ You only have one body, and if youʼre good to it, it will be good to you for the rest of you life”. Fifi is thrilled to have the opportunity to share her love and enthusiasm about nutrition and cooking with the students in the Nurture program.
Elizabeth Manaster
Program Instructor: Adult Classes
Elizabeth is an avid vegetable gardener who loves to cook. She is also a freelance writer and columnist for The Northbrook Patch and has written a cookbook, From A to Zucchini, featuring a few of her daughter’s favorite vegetarian recipes.
She loves children, teaching and sharing her enthusiasm for healthy foods. A mother of three, Elizabeth has also worked as a substitute teacher and a teacher’s aide in District 28. She is currently the Vice President of the Northbrook Community Club and is a member of Temple Jeremiah in Northfield.
Bonnie Masterman
Program Instructor: Kids Classes
After over 20 years in banking, Bonnie decided it was time to be a stay at home mom. With all that extra time on her hands, she started reading about our food supply and general nutrition and began working toward feeding her family better. The Nurture opportunity presented itself as a way not only to have fun with food and children but to learn something herself!
Bonnie is a mother of 2 sweet and kind daughters, one who is an adventurous eater and the other one picky and step mother to a wonderful step son who eats everything. Her husband can be credited with the increased efforts of the past number of years to increase the variety of vegetables into our diet!
Anne McDonagh
Program Instructor: Kids Classess
Anne McDonagh joined Nurture in the Fall of 2010, after working independently on improving children’s access to healthy foods in schools, park districts, after soccer games, and at community activities. Anne learned to cook healthy helping her mother of six prepare food for their family and credits a rigorous high school cooking class for most of her food preparation skills. As well as working in Marketing for 20 years, she has served as a Junior Achievement counselor and classroom teacher and on two school boards. Anne has a degree in Communications and an MBA, both from Northwestern University. She enjoys teaching cooking skills, nutrition, fitness and enhancing school lunch offerings. Anne’s focus is on changing our children’s environment, so they most often are offered the healthy foods that enrich them physically, mentally and emotionally. Anne and her husband have two sons in high school.
Stacey Patillo
Program Instructor: Adult Classes
Stacey has seven years of sales and marketing experience in the transportation & logistics industry. She has BA degree in Business Management from Indiana University and is currently a student at the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in New York City. In July of 2009, she will graduate with a certification in Holistic Health Counseling. Stacey’s passions include cooking, the outdoors and yoga. She resides in Evanston, IL.
Lynn Reiner
Program Instructor: Kids Classes
Lynn has always had a love for cooking and baking for her family and friends. Coupled with the fulfillment of teaching children for the past 14 years for the Glencoe Park District, Nurture was a perfect fit. She has enjoyed working in the non-profit world as the past regional president for ORT America and volunteering for many years in the Highland Park school system for her 3 grown children. Nurture is another opportunity for her to give back to the community her love of both healthy cooking and education.
Beth Stencel
Program Instructor: Kids Classes
Beth and her husband have three wonderful children that have been the center of her life for the past 15 years. She loves to spend time in the garden and kitchen planning the healthiest, quickest and tastiest meals to feed her family. Beth is currently in school, pursuing a lifelong dream of becoming a registered dietitian. She is anxious to get to work, teaching about the importance of healthy eating and exercise. Beth loves running, biking and skiing. She works part time in a holistic healing center. Previously Beth worked in hotel management and meeting planning.
Renata Stojkowski
Program Instructor: Adult Classes
Renata was born in Poland and raised in the countryside where she had access to all natural, organic fruits and veggies from the family garden. In Poland they mostly cook from scratch with different flavors and foods that are very yummy! Renata spotted the Nurture program and got excited about going back to a healthy, better way of eating. She also wanted her daughter, Vanessa, to learn and absorb what Renata had experienced in Poland. Renata feels strongly that we should spread our knowledge and share with other people so we all can stay healthy, strong and live longer!
Elizabeth Thomas
Program Instructor: Kids Classes
Elizabeth is a mother of three small children who is passionate about cooking and creating healthy, delicious meals for her family. Like most moms, she is has limited time to spend grocery shopping or in the kitchen so she is always looking for ways to simplify the process. Elizabeth contributes to Nurture’s Featured Recipe of the Month (here on nurtureyourfamily.org) as well as a blog titled Simple Dinners Ideas (featured on www.healthykidsideas.com). At Simple Dinners Ideas, she posts dinner menus and recipes with ingredients that are on sale in the local grocery stores, and shares her tips for saving time and money while getting dinner on the table. It is her passion that lead her to Nurture where she leads classes for young children of the Northfield Food Pantry and an after school program at Oak Terrace in Highwood, teaching elementary school students the benefits of healthy eating, exercise and preparing healthy, affordable meals at home. Elizabeth, with the help of Slow Food USA and the Dawes PTA Wellness Committee, also coordinated and taught cooking classes for grades K-5 at Dawes Elementary School in Evanston. Elizabeth spent many priceless years in the kitchen with her mother and grandmother and she believes that every child should learn to cook for themselves. It is one of the keys to fighting childhood obesity and nothing brings a family together like food! She hopes to inspire children and adults to get in their kitchens and discover the joy of cooking.
Kim Treger
Program Instructor: Adult Classes
Kim Treger’s interest in cooking began in childhood when she received her first cookbook and asked her mom to allow one day a week to be “children make the dinner day”. She has always held a strong belief that food has curative properties and studied the work of Andrew Weil and Michael Pollan. Her interest in education began that same year when she used to make her sister be her pupil so she could play teacher, and it culminated in a Masters in Education. She has taught everything from preschool to adult education classes and loved it all! When she found Nurture, Kim knew she had found the perfect marriage of her passions and is thrilled to share this with families in her community!
Leslie Weidner
Program Instructor: Kids and Adult Classes
Leslie graduated from the University of Missouri, Columbia in 2000 with a B.S. in Personal Financial Management. She had worked as an Account Manager and Office Manager until, prompted by a health epiphany that coincided with running her first marathon, looked for a career change. (Since then, she has completed seven marathons and over ten half marathons)! Leslie’s passion for nutrition and running led her to embark on a career in Dietetics. She is currently finishing her dietetics studies at Benedictine University in Lisle, IL. In addition to her volunteer work at Nurture, Leslie volunteers two hours a week at Edward Hospital in Naperville in their Food and Nutrition Department. Once she becomes an R.D., her dream is to help kids in a hospital or clinic-based setting.
