Rhode Island is a small state, but AnderBois has a big job as its first director of food strategy. Her purview includes everything from farming and fishing to promoting healthy eating in schools and reducing food insecurity. She is working with several growing industries in Rhode Island’s more than $3-billion food sector, which includes more than 1,200 farms.

AnderBois, who was appointed to the post a year ago by Rhode Island’s governor, released the state’s first comprehensive food strategy—including recommendations on production at the state’s farms and fisheries and ways to alleviate hunger and grow markets for local products—in May. “My charge was to create a strategy that helps us look at some of our big opportunities and challenges in a more coordinated way,” she says. “It’s meant to reflect state government priorities, but also those of Rhode Island as a whole.”

It’s easy for policy reports to go unimplemented, but AnderBois, who met with hundreds of Rhode Islanders while preparing the plan, calls it a “galvanizing tool” for implementing change. The governor created AnderBois’ position at the urging of the Rhode Island Food Policy Council, an independent nonprofit that seeks to create connections across the state’s food system. AnderBois, an environmental studies major (and former DAM intern) who most recently worked as policy analyst and Rhode Island coordinator for the Boston-based New England Clean Energy Council, served on the food policy council’s volunteer board for five years. Some cities have food chiefs, but Rhode Island is the first—and so far, only—state to have a director of food strategy who works to link state agencies with each other, nonprofits and businesses. “The idea is to have state government be able to speak with one voice on food issues,” AnderBois says. “We’re hoping that if it’s successful here, other states can use this as a model.”