Karla Hedquist grew up in a small town and earned dual degrees from Washburn University. Since 2020, she has been the Director of Community Health Engagement at Stormont Vail Health, where she works with community partners, leads health assessments in Shawnee and Geary Counties, and develops hospital plans for the Topeka and Flint Hills hospitals.

She is currently on the boards of United Way of Kaw Valley, SCMS HealthAccess, the Mobile Access Partnership Executive Team, and the LiveWell Shawnee County Leadership Committee.

Robert Riley is the cofounder of Full Circle Sustainability, a local nonprofit focused on making sustainably grown local food easier to access. He and his partner operate their local food distribution service with a focus on reusable and minimal packaging.

Robert is also the operations manager for the Central Topeka Grocery Oasis, another local nonprofit focused on bringing food security back to the food desert in Central Topeka created by the vacuum of a big box grocery store abandoning the community in 2016.

Ed Schneider is married to Delia Veloz Schneider and lives near Burlingame, KS.  They farm ten acres of vegetables along with raising a pair of cows .

The farm starts with planting seeds in January.  Start harvesting asparagus in April, strawberries in May and by then peppers, tomatoes, sweetcorn, melons are coming on as the summer heats up.

Ed has been a farmer all his life and has raised over 800,000 hogs. He has worked for large agricultural companies such as Dekalb, Burris Hybrids, Smithfield Foods, Dubuque Packing, and his own family farm.