Jared Belsky

Background

About Jared Belsky

Living in Pittsburgh at the outset of my career, I have spent the three years working in the nonprofit space, connecting my love for food and my passion for the environment and sustainability. Currently a Restoration Gardener for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, I manage the native and perennial ecosystem of Emerald View Park, working with multiple partners to protect our public spaces and promote long term health of the flora and fauna (including the people!) that enjoy our park system. As I take the next step in my career, I want to dive further into environmental and community-building spaces, while incorporating the effective use of data and problem solving into my work.A member of the 412 Food Rescue (412FR) operations team for over two years, I gained relevant experience in logistics, customer support, training, volunteer engagement, crisis management, workflow process design, and systems review. I have worn many hats at the organization while contributing everyday to the reduction food waste and hunger through innovative last-mile solutions. I feel lucky to have played such a central role to the mission, and it has been a very unique and meaningful way to get to know a city. Since I began at 412FR in early 2020, we saved almost 15 million pounds of perfectly good food from landfill, and I personally moved over a million pounds in our own company vehicles, delivering to nonprofits who serve food insecure communities.In 2019, I worked as a Vegetable Production Assistant at Meadowstone Farm in New Hampshire. I cherish the memories made while working in small-scale, diversified agriculture, and having gotten to know the strong community it supported. Local food will always be a passion of mine, and I want to find innovative ways of making it more accessible to everyone.In 2019, I received a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY, where I also minored in Classical Languages. I played on the varsity and club soccer teams, and I was a member of the Buffers, an a cappella group.In 2018, I studied abroad in Perugia, Italy, where I enrolled in the Umbra Institute's Food and Sustainability Studies Program. After the program ended, I stayed an extra two months to conduct anthropological research on sustainable winemakers in the region. I presented this research at multiple conferences and co-authored a paper in the academic journal Food, Culture & Society.I am an obsessive soccer fan and player, and enjoy reading articles, listening to podcasts about tactics and data analytics in the game.