General Manager and Podcast Producer

Janis is the General Manager and Podcast Producer for the Urban Farm. A large part of her managing duties include the annual Fruit Tree Program which is the local education and pop-up nursery for the Greater Phoenix area, which gives her an outlet for her mad organizational skills.

She has been pestering Greg to make some changes here and there on the website, and in some of the other aspects of running the Urban Farm. This is only fair because he keeps dreaming up new things and new ways to do things and she jumps in to get them done. Her passion to make The Urban Farm a truly valued resource for our listeners, readers, and event participants is obvious in all that she does.

Janis earned her degree in Sustainability from Arizona State University. Her previous work experience was all community and education focused. However, she did not realize how much she could do with the local food system until her Sustainable Food and Farms class. A class she took as a lark, since she had no interest in growing food. Soon after that class she became motivated to learn all she could about gardening and urban farming while using her organization and project management skills to help facilitate a couple of the Urban Farm’s larger events.

From that point on, she has been an active part of the Urban Farm core team as the General Manager as well as the Podcast Producer.  She is bringing her enthusiasm and cheerful attitude to her projects at the Urban Farm especially the Urban Farm Nursery’s Fruit Tree Program and the Urban Farm Podcast, as well as partner projects like the Great American Seed-Up and the GrowPHX Collaborative in Phoenix