Who We Are

It all started when Jessica was young, spending much of her childhood summers in a small rural fishing community off the coast of White Point, Cape Breton. It's known as Cape Breton's best-kept secrets with its rugged coastline, views of Cape Breton mountains, and local fisheries. Jessica learned much from her family about farming, fishing, gathering and hunting in the Cape Breton highlands.

In 2011, she moved to Wolfville, Nova Scotia, to pursue a Bachelor's in Business Administration. While at university, she started working at farm-to-table restaurants, distilleries, breweries, and industry events. She worked and collaborated with values-aligned farmers, fishers, artisans, chefs, winemakers, brew makers, distillers and industry professionals who were dedicated to the slow food movement. A movement of values-aligned individuals dedicated to reconnecting people to understanding where their food comes from, how it is grown, how it tastes and the impact it has on us regionally and worldwide.

In 2016, Jessica moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, to gain an international living, working, and travelling experience. Denmark once lacked a culinary tradition and has been a leader in building a food culture rooted in collaboration, innovation, and sustainability. Denmark's food value chain has evolved to push the boundaries in food exploration and experience and pioneered the New Nordic movement, which brings together primary and support actors along the value chain to grow local, seasonal and sustainably-grown food.

Through these experiences, Jessica learned how a close collaboration from the ground up and stop down along the food value chain fosters economic growth, environmental stewardship, and cultural preservation, leading to resiliency and sustainability within foodways. Jessica moved to Sault Ste. Marie in 2020 and started to work with the Rural Agri-Innovation Centre, a division of Sault Ste. Marie Innovation Centre, where she focused on local food market development through the rebranding and launch of the Buy Algoma, Buy Local program, where she focused on branding, marketing and experience growth of over 60+ local farmers, processors, food businesses, and organizations across Algoma.

In 2019, she went on to work with Ontario's first social finance fund for the local food and farm sector, the Fair Finance Fund. There, she built branding and marketing strategies to support social enterprises accessing accessible and equitable capital to grow their business while attracting community-minded investors to invest in Ontario's local food and farm sector. Alongside the team, she supported the Fund in gaining $3.5M+ in assets under management, 70+ investors, and 60+ loan clients.

In 2023, she moved on to support the Local Food and Farm Co-operatives on their Northern Foodways Development Network initiative. Through value chain coordination, the network collaborates and cooperates to build equitable, resilient, connected foodways throughout Northern Ontario. As a Regional Value Chain Coordination, Jessica facilitated business exchanges among primary and support actors, conveyed stakeholders, innovated new ideas, provided business technical assistance, and provided resource prospecting.

Throughout the years, she recognized and learned about a narrative of a lack of food culture and brand recognition, limited recognition outside of the region, little regional collaboration, and a lack of coordination among stakeholders in Northern Ontario. Jessica was dedicated and passionate about changing this narrative. Jessica launched Rooted Impact, a branding and marketing initiative to help facilitate the growth of local food and beverage social enterprises while promoting Northern Ontario's unique local food and beverage products and experiences to consumers and tourists, locally and provincially.