Fania Yangarber, Executive Director

Fania Yangarber has a BA in Political Science from Barnard College, an MS in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition from Tufts University and a JD from Chicago-Kent College of Law. She has worked in health related advocacy fields in a professional and volunteer capacity. She worked at the US Department of Agriculture as a food safety specialist, helping to develop international food safety standards and regulations; for the Social Security Administration, on disability cases; advocated for victims' rights and patients' rights to informed consent, and worked in nutrition research environments. Before attending law and graduate school, she worked for several years in financial information services.  

R. Lindsey Parsons, Co-Founder and Former Executive Director

Co-founder of RFKM, Lindsey Parsons has BA in French from Wesleyan University, an MA in Romance Linguistics from University of Texas at Austin and a Doctor of Education from Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia.  She worked previously as a Study Abroad Advisor at the University of Georgia and as Manager of Finance and Human Resources at a private wealth management firm. Lindsey co-founded HSFM in 2012 and served first as co-director then Executive Director from 2016-June 2017. She is currently a Certified Health Coach living and working in Tucson, Arizona.

Karen Devitt, Co-founder and former Director

The other co-founder of HSFM, Karen has a BA in English, worked for many years in the IT side of the publishing profession, and currently has her own business providing musical instruction and entertainment in the D.C. metro area. She has been reading and researching extensively on the issue of school food for several years since she encountered problems with her own daughter's over-consumption of competitive foods of low nutritional value in MCPS schools.