Who We Are

Tom Sabo, Executive Director

Sabo is an award-winning high school teacher, leading sustainability educator, prominent local food activist, and most recently the founding executive director of the Center for Sustainable Systems.  He is a chief architect of a model of service learning that integrates curriculum through a school greenhouse and gardens that provide food for the school system’s lunch program, using soil derived from the cafeteria food scraps.

Sabo is a past member of the state-wide Farm To Plate Education and Workforce Development Group, and has served on the Vermont State Standards Advisory Board for science.  He was a founding member of the Steering Committee of the Central Vermont Food Systems Council and co-chaired the Food Education Committee.  He is a 2009 recipient of the Milken National Educator Award and a 2011 Rowland Foundation Fellow.  He has taught biology and environmental science at Montpelier High School for the past 25 years and holds an M.S. from the University of Massachusetts at Boston.

Board of Directors

  • Mark Cannella, Farm Business Management Specialist, UVM Extension
  • Matthew McLane, Director of Flexible Pathways, Montpelier High School
  • Nicole Meier, Hunter Education and Outreach, Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department
  • Emma Paradis, Policy and Program Coordinator, Common Good Vermont
  • Emma Schoenberg, Climate Disobedience Center

Partners and donors include:

  • Montpelier Roxbury Public Schools
  • The Rowland Foundation
  • Still Point Fund
  • Green Mountain Coffee Roasters
  • Harris and Frances Block Foundation
  • The Bay and Paul Foundations
  • National Life Group Foundation
  • Redducs Foundation
  • New England Grassroots Environment Fund

For more information contact: