Orion Kriegman

Executive Director

orion@bostonfoodforest.org

Orion is the founding Executive Director of the Boston Food Forest Coalition and played a major role in the conception of Egleston Community Orchard in Jamaica Plain, which was the first food forest site to be adopted into the BFFC land trust. Since then, Orion has collaborated with the city of Boston, colleagues and local neighbors to expand the number of healthy food forests included in the land trust and the number of Bostonians included in the movement.

Orion has a background directing community-organizing work at Jamaica Plain New Economy Transition (JPNET), a group that works to catalyze community leadership toward the launch of new initiatives such as farmers markets, land trusts, and spaces for community dialogue and action across race and class divisions. BFFC emerged from this work, and became Orion’s full-time focus.

Prior to the creation of BFFC, Orion received his Masters in Public Policy and Urban Planning from Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He spent nine years at the Tellus Institute coordinating the Great Transition Initiative, an international network of scholars and activists examining the requirements for a transition to a sustainable planetary civilization. He has also worked as a Project Officer for Reflecting on Peace Practice (RPP), a learning network which gathers lessons about peace-building efforts in internal armed conflicts. He also worked for two years in Guatemala to help government and civil society implement the policies outlined in the peace accords. Having worked at the international level early in his career, Orion now focuses on regional and local work. 

In 2015, Orion completed his Permaculture Design Certificate studying with Lisa Fernandes of the Resilience Hub in Portland, ME. He infuses his passion for permaculture philosophies into his leadership of BFFC and his presence in the BFFC network.