Leadership
Team
Ben Rasmussen | Chief Executive Officer
Ben has been with the National Center for Frontier Communities (NCFC) since 2015, where he led groundbreaking regional food system studies and subsequently launched the Frontier Food Hub in 2018. His work is informed by a deep, lived understanding of the unique policy and programmatic challenges faced by frontier and rural communities. This insight stems from years spent working directly with these populations, including his service with rural veterans through the VA Hospital System and experience in rural landscapes across the nation. His diverse background in programming, policy, and community development, shaped by his lived experience in remote communities, enables him to craft solutions tailored to the complexities of frontier regions—ultimately bringing him to Silver City and NCFC, where he continues to drive impactful initiatives.
Johannes Lencer | Chief Operating Officer
Johannes started working with Frontier Food Hub in 2021 and took on the program management role in 2023. He is currently pursuing a Master of Science in Food Systems and an MBA in Sustainable Business Leadership from Prescott College. His passion in this role is to build meaningful and trusting relationships between the program, the growers, the buyers, the community and other partner organizations in an effort to support an equitable and resilient food system in New Mexico. Originally from Germany, Johannes has been a US resident since 2018 and moved to just outside Silver City in 2020.
Christina Johnson | Community Wellness Manager
Christina has over 10 years of experience in community organizing and nonprofit management and obtained her bachelor’s degree in social work and a minor in human services from University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2015. She obtained her master’s degree in social work and a graduate certificate in rural community social work from Western New Mexico University in 2022. Christina moved to Silver City, New Mexico in 2018 and enjoys hiking and running in the Gila National Forest, gardening, and spending time with her daughter.
Chase Sturdevant | Frontier Food Hub Sales Coordinator
Chase grew up in Silver City, with his family having roots in Grant County all the way back to the 1940s. After graduating from Eastern New Mexico University, Chase worked in finance in Phoenix, Arizona before deciding to move his family back to Silver City in 2017. This decision was made to be closer to his family and to give his children the opportunity to grow up in a small town where community matters. Chase’s favorite part about working in local food systems is working with local producers and the people who are enjoying the food they grow. Chase finds joy in exploring creative and new ways to help provide better food access to all people in our communities to enjoy locally grown foods.
James Ervin | Distribution Specialist
James moved to Bayard, New Mexico from South Texas in January of 2016. Growing up in North Africa and Southeast Asia, he developed a fascination for a variety of cultures which allowed him to explore a broad range of perspectives. Also influential was an early career teaching writing and literature and over two decades working in Information Technology. Working for Frontier Food Hub has provided James an opportunity to have influence in his community and across New Mexico. Every day, he is grateful for encounters with so many people who have enthusiastically dedicated their life to making local food accessible to all who desire it.
Gay Hedges | Distribution Specialist
Gay grew up on a cotton farm in West Texas, worked for years at a farm and livestock supply store, has taught third grade, and been a massage therapist. She has spent 12 years delivering medicine to nursing homes in and around Lubbock, Texas. She moved to Silver City in August of 2021. One of the things that drew her here was the evident culture of service so predominant in the area. She feels like the opportunity to move fresh produce to interested members of her new community is the universe answering her wish to create a life of meaningful work.
Elysha Montoya | Community Engagement Coordinator
Elysha is native to New Mexico and grew up in the small town of Bayard. Like her great-grandparents, she is proud to claim Chicano ancestry as an organizer, a social justice advocate, and a passionate gardener. This passion started when she helped build a community garden in her hometown that her mother founded. Since 2020, she has focused on leading and teaching educational workshops ranging from social injustices to ethnobotanical walks in our local forest. She is currently working toward her BSW at WNMU. Elysha is excited to be in her role as Community Engagement Coordinator as she continues the path of serving her gente and this beautiful land they have originated on.
Oly Sturdevant | Communications Specialist
A first-generation American, Oly was born and raised in Eastern New Mexico in a beautifully vibrant Mexican neighborhood where strong community relationships, storytelling, art, and music were a daily part of life. It makes sense that that the little girl who had to translate/interpret for adults and was told “hablas mucho, mija” would one day grow up to be a Communications Specialist.
From an early age, Oly was taught that helping people in any form was the greatest calling a person has. Working for National Center for Frontier Communities combines Oly’s passions of food accessibility and sovereignty with helping the community she lives in.
Board Members | Current
Jedidiah Drolet | Board President
Jed Drolet (Alaska) is a Senior Neighborhood Planner for the Anchorage Health Department in Anchorage, Alaska. In this role he oversees the planning process for the Municipality of Anchorage’s HUD entitlement grant programs, including the Community Development Block Grant, HOME Investment Partnerships, and Emergency Solutions Grant programs. Jed has previously worked for the Regulatory Commission of Alaska, the Alaska Energy Authority, and the National Park Service on a wide variety of planning, project development, and community assistance initiatives. He holds a Master of City and Regional Planning degree from Rutgers University.
Carol Miller | Board Member
Carol Miller, MPH, (New Mexico) is currently a full time community volunteer and activist. She is the President of the Ojo Sarco Community Center. Miller served as the Executive Director of the National Center for Frontier Communities for ten years. Previously she founded the Frontier Education Center, where she served as President from 1997-2001. Miller has lived in a frontier mountain village in northern New Mexico since 1976. She has held Presidential appointments in both the Reagan and Clinton Administrations, serving as a Commissioned Officer in the US Public Health Service in the 1980’s and in 1993 was a Presidential Appointee to the White House Health Care Task Force. Miller served two terms as President of the New Mexico Public Health Association, represented the Frontier Constituency Group on the board of the National Rural Health Association for six years, and served six terms as a Governing Councilor of the American Public Health Association.
Eowyn Corral | Board Member
Eowyn Corral (they/she), when not obsessing over where community organizing and building holistic systems meet, can be found with a handwork project, cooking, eating, or growing food. Most recently director of development and programs at Dakota Rural Action and a past NSAC Organizational Council (OC) member, Eowyn has focused on local & regional food systems and sustainable agriculture policy for the last 15 years. Based in the Dakotas, the occupied lands of the Oceti Sakowin Oyate (the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota peoples), Eowyn comes to this work via a love for fiber animals, seasonal foods, and textile arts. As a dedicated grassroots community organizer rooted in justice and equity, Eowyn has been invited to serve in many leadership roles in movement spaces, honing a skill to facilitate what challenges us. Originally from southern California and of Michoacán descent, Eowyn plans to find their way back to the west coast eventually to raise animals on pasture on a multigenerational farm with their family. At NSAC she works to connect and empower grassroots food and farm groups in NSAC’s membership and the broader movement, supports the coalition’s grassroots campaigns, and stewards the Racial Justice Committee.
Caroline Ford | Board Member
Caroline Ford, is an Assistant Dean Emeritus in Frontier and Rural Health-University of Nevada School of Medicine and served for 27+ years. She held the position as the longest-serving director of a State Office of Rural Health when she retired from the University in July of 2011. She has directed local Wellness/Community Health programs for the Tahoe Forest Health System and served on the nation’s first National Advisory Committee on Rural Health, appointed by then Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Louis W. Sullivan. Ford has also served as President of the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health and has been active in the American Public Health Association and numerous local and state organizations since 1978. She currently supports the Tahoe Truckee Future Without Drug Dependence as the past chair and now Development Director. She has a bachelor’s degree in Community Health Education and a master’s degree in Public Health.
Board | Distinguished Directors and Honorary Board Members
Betty King | Distinguished Board Member
Betty King returned as a board member for a short term appointment in 2024. She resides in Bisbee, Arizona and holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public health. Positions held during her professional career include Assistant Director, National Rural Health Association; Executive Director, Internal Medicine Center to Advance Research and Education; and Director, Cochise County Health and Social Services. Consulting and contract engagements included The Circle (National Health Service Corps/National Clearinghouse for Primary Care Information), the National Organization of State Offices of Rural Health and the University of Arizona.
Deborah Popper | Honorary Board Member
Deborah E. Popper (New York) is visiting professor at Princeton University’s Environmental Institute and professor emerita of geography at the City University of New York’s College of Staten Island and Graduate Center. Professor Popper has written on transformations of the American frontier, both in its current incarnation as the American West and its earlier, more Eastern embodiment. Her article “The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust” (Planning, December 1987), written with her husband Frank Popper put forward the controversial Buffalo Commons thesis that stimulated an ongoing national debate about the future of the Great Plains region as based on ecological restoration. She has also explored how other American regions and urban areas have responded to long-term population loss. She is interested in how food systems, energy systems, and economies can result in thriving or troubled communities. She serves on the governing board of the American Geographical Society, the country’s oldest national geographic organization, and coedits its digital publication “Focus on Geography.” She has a bachelor’s degree in history from Bryn Mawr College, a masters degree in library science from Rosary College, and a masters and doctorate in geography from Rutgers University.
Gar Elison | Distinguished Director
Distinguished Director Gar Elison retired as the first president of the NCFC Board of Directors and as Executive Director of the Utah Medical Education Council in 2009. He has served in different capacities in health agencies for over thirty years, including as an Executive Board member of the National Academy for State Health Policy, chair of the Primary Care and Prevention Steering Committee, and as a member of the Access for the Uninsured Steering Committee. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Brigham Young University and a masters in library science with a minor in public administration from the University of Oklahoma.
Louis LaRose | Distinguished Board Director
Distinguished Director Louis LaRose is an enrolled member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. From 1993-2005, he served as Bison Caretaker for the Winnebago Bison Project whose mission is to restore bison to the Winnebago Indian Reservation in a manner that promotes cultural enhancement, spiritual revitalization and personal health, ecological restoration and economic development. He also served five years as Chairman of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska. LaRose is a past vice chairman of the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, the steering committee of the Native American Rights Fund and was instrumental in establishing Nebraska Indian Community College. He has been interim president of Little Priest Tribal College. LaRose volunteers as a mediator for the Nebraska Justice Center.
Antonio Manzanares | Distinguished Director
Distinguished director Antonio Manzanares is a self-employed rancher who lives in the mountains of the Northern New Mexico. He and his wife, Molly, are owners of Shepherd’s Lamb, the only certified organic lamb business in the state. He is a long-time community activist who has been involved in rural health care, sustainable community development and resource protection. Manzanares has served on a number of boards, including the Rio Arriba County Planning Board, the Board of Directors of La Clinica del Pueblo de Rio Arriba, a nationally recognized community health center, the Board of Directors of Ganados del Valle, a grassroots community cooperative, the Upper Chama Soil and Water Conservation District and the New Mexico Sheep and Wool Council. He is a recipient of the New Mexico Public Health Association President’s Award for his efforts to promote the health and economic well-being of his community. Manzanares has a bachelors degree in psychology from the University of New Mexico.
Frank Popper | Honorary Board Member
Frank J. Popper (New York) retired from Rutgers’ Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy in 2020 after teaching land-use planning there since 1983. He and his wife Deborah E. Popper have taught together at Princeton’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and what is now the school’s High Meadows Environmental Institute since 2001. He is the author of several books. He has served on the boards of the American Land Publishing Project, the American Planning Association, Ecocity Builders, and the Great Plains Restoration Council. His article “The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust” (Planning, December 1987), written with his wife, Deborah Popper, put forward the controversial Buffalo Commons thesis that has stimulated an ongoing national debate about the future of the Great Plains region. The Poppers have also written extensively about the American frontier. He has a masters degree in public administration and a doctorate in political science, both from Harvard University.
Board | In Memoriam
David Squire
