Amanda Richard, Director of Development

Growing up in rural Ohio, Amanda has always had a connection with farms and the land that grows our food. Her most favorite memories are the times spent in her small town with her grandparents growing tomatoes, green beans, and beets, fishing, and foraging for mushrooms. But her most formative time was spent in the kitchen with family. From standing on a chair at the counter learning to cook with her Pappa, to exploring new cultures through food with her mom, food has always been the center of her life.

Amanda moved to Nashville in 1998 to attend Belmont University. She received her degree in Music Business and worked in music publishing right out of college. She soon realized that she wanted more from her career and found herself drawn to nonprofit work. For over 17 years, Amanda has worked as a fundraiser at some of Nashville’s most notable nonprofits, including Second Harvest Food Bank, the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, Nashville Zoo, and the Adventure Science Center. Her most recent experiences at The Branch of Nashville and the global animal welfare organization, Compassion in World Farming, gave her greater insight into what it takes to create a sustainable, equitable food system.

Amanda is excited to join the team at TNFP and unite her personal passions of cooking, sharing meals, and building community with her professional fundraising and relationship building skills. When she’s not at TNFP, Amanda loves to cook and create recipes for her blog, read, and check out new restaurants with her husband.

Thena Robertson, Preschool Meals Manager

Thena moved to Nashville from Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 2022. In Milwaukee, she owned and operated an in-home childcare program and assisted with her family’s childcare center. Through her efforts toward providing for children, she realized the importance of food access for families and children. Her passion for connecting children to nourishing food eventually brought her to The Nashville Food Project’s satellite kitchen at St. Luke’s Community House, where she leads production of meals for the organization’s preschool students. Outside of work, Thena enjoys cooking, refurbishing furniture, and spending time with her two children and three grandchildren.

Mary Elizabeth Smithson, Community Meals Partnership Manager

Mary Elizabeth Smithson is originally from Jackson, Mississippi and made her way to Nashville in 2017. Her original plan to get a post-grad degree in Sociology, after graduating from the University of Mississippi with a BA in Anthropology/Sociology in 2014, took an interesting twist when she completed three years of AmeriCorps programs. She got her start in the food world with two service years of FoodCorps in Oxford, Mississippi from 2015-2017 and fell in love with the work. While in Nashville, she juggled a few different jobs as a farm educator, an after-school garden instructor, and a meal prep cook before a stint in New Orleans at a meal prep company, where she managed the plating/packaging department. She returned to Nashville in August 2020, reconnecting with friends and spending more time on her hobbies, such as sewing and roller skating. She is thrilled to be in community with TNFP coworkers who are driven by food justice, sustainability, and alleviating hunger. Once the pandemic lets up, you'll be sure to find her at a music festival dancing to her favorite artists, traveling to new places to see what else is out there, or simply cooking in her kitchen with friends and family.

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Allison Thayer, Director of Community Engagement

Allison grew up in Florida with a Spanish mother who loved (and excelled at!) cooking, which she absorbed from a young age. As a child, she would watch Emeril Live and emphatically mimic his famous “Bam!” when helping in the kitchen. She also cares deeply about nature, conservation, and sustainable food production, and spends as much of her ‘time off’ as possible exploring the outdoors. Since moving to Nashville in 2015, she has been steadily inserting herself into the local food system: as a regular CSA customer, a member of the Nashville Food Co-Op, an active participant in events focused on local food production and waste reduction, and most recently as a weekly volunteer on the Caney Fork Farms Vegetable Team.

Allison has a degree in English and Latin American Studies from the University of Notre Dame. She moved to Spain to teach English through the Fulbright Program, then on to Washington DC to work as a research consultant for postsecondary education institutions. The rest (and majority) of her career has been spent working in corporate strategy and operations at a multinational research and consulting firm. She is delighted to be making a career shift that allows her to focus on growing sustainable food systems and communities.

Outside of work Allison enjoys cooking, hiking, and spending time with her husband, child, and dog. She dreams of one day owning a tapas bar or an on-farm restaurant, as long as it doesn’t have to be profitable.