Timothy Fitzgerald Young
Timothy Young is President of Food For Thought, Inc., creators of organic and wild harvested gourmet specialty foods. Young established the company in 1996 with the goal of crafting high quality organic gourmet foods and to serve as a model to counter the global industrial food system. For three consecutive years, Young was invited to Bon Appetite Magazine's acclaimed Wine and Spirits Festival in Chicago, which showcases many of the best chefs in the Midwest. In addition to creating exciting products from the farms and forest of northern Michigan, Young has a long history of humanitarian activism on a range of issues, including farmland preservation both here and abroad. A past President of the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council, Young is currently vice chair for the board of the Michigan Land Use Institute. His awards include Environmentalist of the Year and Environmental Business of the Year, voted Best Local Hero, by a readers poll in the Northern Express Magazine and was recently honored by The Traverse Business News as a "Green Pioneer" of northwest Michigan.
Food For Thought is located on an organic farm in northern Michigan and housed in a green building built by Timothy in the heart of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore where Young lives with his wife, Kathy, 7 year-old daughter Stella and 3 year-old son Connor.
Timothy grew up in Flint, Michigan where he attended Catholic high school. He studied International Relations in England and Spain and has a Masters Degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Arizona where his thesis focused on grassroots political participation in Cuba. As Timothy often states, "I can tell you just about anything you want to know about political participation in Cuba, therefore, I make jam for a living."
