Norbert Wilson will join a powerhouse lineup of thought leaders in policy, academia, nonprofit advocacy, and youth activism for a featured panel on school food reform at SXSW EDU® 2026, one of the world’s leading platforms for bold ideas shaping the future of education.
Led by Chef Ann Foundation CEO Mara Fleishman, the panel “Feeding Kids Like We Give a Damn: Transforming School Food,” will look at school food as the nation’s most overlooked public health intervention. Panelists will share what’s at stake for kids, communities, and the climate, and reveal how real-world success stories are proving that change is both possible and scalable.
Featured Panelists Include:
- Congressman Jim McGovern – U.S. Representative for Massachusetts’s 2nd District, Ranking Member of the House Rules Committee, and senior member of the Agriculture Committee. A national leader in the fight against hunger, he co-chairs the bipartisan House Hunger Caucus, helped organize the 2022 White House Conference on Hunger, and authored key legislation expanding school meals and nutrition programs.
- Norbert Wilson– Director of the World Food Policy Center and Professor at Duke University, whose expertise focuses on equitable food systems, nutrition, and climate resilience.
- Maya Miller,– Environmental Studies major at the University of Pennsylvania and a nationally recognized youth advocate for sustainable, plant-forward school meals.
- Mara Fleishman – CEO of the Chef Ann Foundation and a national leader in scratch-cooked school food reform, workforce investment, and systems-level nutrition change.
Session Overview: Feeding Kids Like We Give a Damn
This panel asks the question too few are willing to: What are healthy kids—and a healthy planet—really worth?
Every day, more than 30 million kids eat in nearly 100,000 school cafeterias across the U.S.—making school food the largest restaurant system in the country. What’s on the tray affects everything from chronic disease and classroom behavior to local agriculture and environmental sustainability. Yet school food remains chronically underfunded, highly processed, and largely invisible in national conversations.
Panelists will explore how scratch-cooked, plant-forward school meals, smart policy, and bold community action can turn cafeterias into powerful engines for change. From kitchen infrastructure to workforce wages, they’ll break down the systemic barriers and share the real success stories already happening in districts nationwide.
The Chef Ann Foundation is a national nonprofit dedicated to ensuring that school food professionals have the resources, funding, and support they need to provide fresh, healthy, scratch-cooked meals to kids every day. Since its founding in 2009, the organization has reached more than 14,000 schools and 3.4 million children across the U.S. through programs that advance equity, workforce development, and systems-level change in school food.
SXSW EDU will take place March 9-12, 2026 in Austin, Texas.