Leo is The Sylvia Center's Upstate Programs Coordinator. Always a lover of food, he began cooking in restaurants in Oakland, CA. He came up in collaborative kitchens that used local, seasonal produce on daily changing menus, requiring him to think on his feet every day. He liked thinking about food so much that he went to London and got a graduate degree in the anthropology of food, where he studied class and power in California’s “slow food” restaurants. After a few years on the grind in NYC, he's back home in the Hudson Valley, where he gets to teach, learn, and cook every day. Besides working at TSC, he cooks at a local restaurant, reads a ton of books, enjoys time with friends, watches weird movies, and digs around in his garden/yells at deer (weather permitting).