Our Story
Working Towards a Better Tomorrow
GrassRoots Alliance was co-founded by Justin Baker, who is also the founder of Conscious Alliance. Since its formation in 2002, Conscious Alliance has provided more than two million meals to impoverished communities across the US. In 2005, Conscious Alliance teamed up with New Waveland Cafe to distribute thousands of meals in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It was this experience that laid the groundwork for GrassRoots Alliance's involvement in disaster relief. GrassRoots Alliance aims to not only feed the needy in the local community on a day-to-day basis but to have a fully mobile disaster relief unit that will be able to provide meals for those in communities that have been struck by catastrophe.
Who We Are
BOARD MEMBERS
Justin Baker
Founder
Justin Baker is a specialist in food distribution logistics. Justin Baker has been feeding people for more than 20 years. GrassRoots Alliance was founded by Justin, in 2017, to further feeding the hungry in the United States and throughout the world in times of disaster.
Justin co-founded a local chapter of Food Not Bombs in Hartford, CT when he was 15 years old to collect, prepare, and redistribute surplus food donations from local business to the area’s homeless. Upon arriving at the University of Colorado at Boulder in the late 1990’s, Justin utilized this same strategy with Boulder, CO’s homeless population. This passion eventually led Justin to found the non-profit organization, Conscious Alliance in the spring, of 2002.
Justin was Executive Director of the Conscious Alliance from 2002-2010. The core focus of his work was to create and operate a food pantry on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in SD, to provide free food for the elders and children that live there. The Conscious Alliance has collected and distributed over 2,000,000 lbs. of food donations to impoverished Indian Reservations and local food banks across the United States.
In 2007, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Justin and Conscious Alliance became active in disaster relief and recovery efforts. These efforts led Justin to Haiti, in the wake of the 2010 earthquake and to the Philippines after Typhoon Yolanda in 2013. Justin’s focus and passion remains in food distribution and mass feeding logistics to alleviate hunger in the US and throughout the world in times of disaster.
Jared Levy
BOARD MEMBER
Jared sits on the board of directors for the prestigious Social Venture Network, a premier socially responsible business community, and for the Love Serve Remember (Ram Dass’) Foundation. He is an adjunct professor for the University of Colorado advertising program and is founder and CEO of Guru Media Solutions, a nimble, mindfully different strategic marketing agency focusing on empowering movements and purpose driven brands.
His past is rooted in digital marketing across the music and entertainment industry where he grew and sold his digital publicity agency (working on EMI, Warner and many major artists) to a major label. He then moved into working with larger conscious food and beverage brands (Jamba Juice, LunaBar, California Pizza Kitchen, etc) with co-owned creative agency, Neighbor Agency, which was sold to a holding company, Zealot Networks in 2014.
He has led ground breaking communications and digital marketing campaigns for a wide array of purpose driven clients including Obama 08’, 1% For the Planet, Echoing Green, MPAA, Safeway, UCLA and many others. He is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and creative strategy and is regularly invited to speak at large corporate events and universities.
He is based in San Francisco and lives in Marin county with his wife Jyoti, their daughter Jaya Grace and ever-present dog Beans.
Matt Atwood
BOARD MEMBER
Matt is an entrepreneur and technologist focused on technologies to combat climate-change and produce clean water and energy. He was the founder and CEO of Algae Systems, a groundbreaking renewable energy and water company that built the world’s first carbon-negative, energy-positive wastewater treatment plant in Alabama. He is also the founder and CEO of the Air Capture Company which captures CO2 from the air to sell to various markets.
Matt is also a community organizer and activist. He has been heavily involved in drug policy reform where he was the Executive Director of IDEAL Reform as the first lobbyist and author of the Illinois Medical Cannabis Act and served as the Chairman of Students for Sensible Drug Policy from 2001 - 2005, helping grow the organization from 20 to over 350 chapters nationwide. Matt was also the main organizing force behind Entheon Village, a large burning man camp that hosted visionary art exhibitions, lecture series on the environmental technologies and MAPS’ 20th anniversary party.
In addition to his activism work, Matt has served on the board of directors of several non-profit organizations includiing the Conscious Alliance, the American Rainbow Rapid Response and Our Future Now.