STAFF BIOS

​Matt Tsang
Executive Director and founder of Growing Leaders! Long time teacher, chef and gardener extraordinaire!
Staff Bio coming soon

Ellen McClure
Head Teacher & Garden Manager
         This is  Ellen's 10th year of working with Growing Leaders and the Willard Garden. We could not run this program without her! She came to Growing Leaders with several years of experience working on small organic farms in California and Vermont. She also lived and taught environmental education at Slide Ranch in Marin County. Ellen started with Growing Leaders as an Americorps garden teacher as she was interested in experiential education and helping students connect with nature. She enjoys using cooking as a way to connect to the foods we are growing in the garden.  
     Ellen loves that our program is hands-on and gives students an opportunity to learn in a different way that they might not experience in other classes. She especially likes making pizza in the earth oven in the garden with the students, as they make their our own tomato sauce and harvest ingredients straight from the garden.
       In her free time she loves growing garlic and  baking fruit galettes with any fruit that is in season!  She loves animals, is an   avid cyclist and is a climate activist and who likes to promote climate change solutions! 

Susanne Jensen
Head Cooking Teacher
    Susanne has been with working Growing Leaders from the beginning and we could not run this amazing program without her. She is the founding cooking teacher and has been teaching cooking to our students since 1999! She loves teaching at Growing Leaders because she loves to see students get excited about school and cooking. Her favorite days with students are  meal prep days when all the students are engaged and busy in the kitchen helping to prepare the meal.
      Originally Susanne is from Denmark but moved to the U.S. in 1980 where she studied Natural Healing and Cooking with the Kushi Institute and became a cooking teacher.  She then moved to California to study yoga and eventually she owned her own catering business in San Francisco for many years. Susanne has a passion for natural foods and vegetarian cooking. In her free time she likes to cook, practice yoga, read, knit and spend time with her grandson.

​Hailey O'Brien
Garden Manager
      Hailey helps manage our Willard garden and has been working with Growing Leaders for 3 years. She appreciates Growing Leaders because it gives students the opportunity to be agents pf change within their lives and larger community. Tending to and taking care of the land, harvesting food, and cooking meals together gives students powerful knowledge and skills that they can bring into their lives.
         Hailey has a degree in Public Health and Nutrition from Southern Connecticut University. She has tended to several community gardens and urban farms  New Haven, Connecticut.  In her free time Hailey loves to hike, camp, reading, spending time with family.
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