Our team

Frank Mechielsen

Director

Frank graduated in Agricultural Engineering from the Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Between 1989 and 2000, he worked as a program manager and sustainable agriculture advisor in Sudan, Nicaragua and Cambodia.

The past 20 years he worked as program manager and policy advisor for Hivos and Oxfam Novib in the Netherlands. He developed and managed an international advocacy programme to promote sustainable diets in Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Indonesia and Bolivia and he was co-lead of the UN Sustainable Food Systems Programme.

At Oxfam he supported the development and implementation of public campaigns in relation to food companies and supermarkets to promote fair chocolate (Green Santa Claus) and inclusive and sustainable supply chains (Behind the Brands).

Anneke Boersma

Campaigner Food & Climate

Anneke is a campaigner on industrial meat, like Meat Us Halfway, and helps out with other project and communication. After obtaining her MSc in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden, she helped organizing two social media campaigns on sustainable diets. Before becoming a campaigner at Feedback EU, she taught various courses and researched health inequalities and food initiatives at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Ayuk Bakia

Policy Advisor Food, Land Use & Energy

Ayuk is a member of Feedback EU and currently works in policy on biomethane and its relation to food, land use and energy. After obtaining her MSc degree in Psychology from Erasmus University Rotterdam she worked in education and contributed to several research projects on mental health. After several years of working in social science research, her personal interest in food and sustainability led her to co-found a social entrepreneurship focused on minimizing food waste. As Head of Impact she focused on valorising waste streams, co-creating food campaigns and advocating for plant-based and zero waste practices in the Netherlands.

Darren Hughes

Chair

Darren Hughes is a strategic communications and policy consultant in the areas of food, nutrition, agriculture and health, with nearly 30 years of experience working in Government, academia and the charity sector. He currently works with the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition, a high-level, independent group of leaders tasked with supporting governments in low- and middle-income countries to develop evidence-based policies to transform food systems so they are more environmentally sustainable and deliver healthier diets. Prior to this he had policy roles in the UK Department of Health, the Food Standards Agency, and served as Private Secretary to the Government Chief Scientific Adviser. He also served as the Head of Public Affairs at Rothamsted Research, the longest running agricultural research institute in the world. Darren holds a MSc in Human Nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a PhD in human energy metabolism and appetite regulation.

Carina Millstone

Secretary

Carina’s career began in the business world working as a sustainability consultant for Environmental Resources Management, before she realised our planetary ecological crisis would not be solved in the corporate boardrooms in which it was created. She has since worked with several system change campaigning and movement building organisations, including Changing Markets in the UK and the New Economy Coalition in the US. A committed permaculturalist, she founded The Orchard Project, a charity working with community groups in cities across the UK to plant and nurture community orchards in public urban spaces. Carina has also been a Visiting Research Fellow of the Global Development and Environment Institute of Tufts University and is a Research Fellow of the Schumacher Institute. Her book, Frugal Value: Designing Business for a Crowded Planet (Routledge, 2017), provides a blueprint for organisations in an ecologically viable system of production and consumption.

Rick Pleij

Treasurer

Rick has worked as account manager for Dutch non-profit organisations with a major Dutch bank since 2018, having worked in banking since 2013. With a network that covers policy-makers, directors, board members and key figures within the NGO sector as well as trade unions and philanthropic organisations, he aims to help Feedback connect and traverse the landscape in which it operates. Raised in a household where key environmental NGO’s were omnipresent, his personal beliefs match the current course of Feedback EU and he hopes to pass this spirit on to his twin boys.

Gine Zwart

Member

Agriculture, food and production systems, hunger and poverty, exclusion and exploitation. For over 30 years Gine has been working in these areas to find links and lasting solutions. Both at a practical level: implementing and overseeing programmes in Africa for the FAO and extensive travel to other continents for Oxfam. In her close to 20 years for Oxfam Gine has been instrumental in setting the agenda for Oxfam on its rural livelihoods and sustainable agriculture programmes and campaigns on the ground as well as in relation to (multinational) companies. Gine currently work s for a small NGO in the Netherlands ARISA where she is works on the relationship business and human rights with a focus on Dutch/European companies and their supply chains from India. Gine holds an MSc (awarded with honours) of the Agriculture University and Research Centre of Wageningen, the Netherlands. She is a mother for two daughters and lives together with her husband in the Netherlands. When not there Gine can be found in, or on, the water: swimming or sailing.