About the Ypsilanti Food Co-op's Board of Directors

It is the mission of the Ypsi Food Co-op to provide high quality food and goods, produced ecologically and sustainably, while practicing cooperative economics. Our membership owns the Co-op building and Co-op members comprise the Board of Directors which oversees its operation.  The Board ensures that the Co-op continues to provide excellent service and quality products, while fulfilling our commitment to the greater community. The Board members are volunteers who set long-term goals and policies for the Co-op and work regularly with the staff and general manager to ensure that the Co-op's health, stability and service to its member-owners and community remain in top notch shape.

2013 Board of Directors – Click on the name to read a bio.

•    Liz Dahl MacGregor, President
•    David Choberka, Vice President
•    Paul Fisher, Chair
•    Jeff Clark, Secretary
•    Karin Keim, Treasurer
•    Jesse Tack
•    Bill Ayars

Liz Dahl MacGregor has been a member of the Ypsilanti Food Co-op since 2006.  She's interested in a sustainable lifestyle based on supporting the local economy and making healthy choices for her family. 

A licensed attorney, Liz works for Legal Service of South Central Michigan as a content development attorney. That means she gets to translate legal language into something understandable for a self-help legal website. 

She tries to be an active and involved member of the Ypsilanti community, although this is challenging with two small children demanding her attention. Contact Liz.

David Choberka lives with his partner, Erica, and daughter, Elektra, in the Normal Park neighborhood of Ypsilanti.  He teaches in the German Department of the University of Michigan.  In July 2012, Dave will begin a new job at the UM Museum of Art.

David has lived in Ypsi for 10 years, and he is an avid gardener and active member of the Recreation Park Community Garden. He grew up mostly in central Illinois, though spent three years as a young child in Singapore.  In addition to Illinois & Michigan, he hived for several years in Tennessee. 

Whether it's being a devoted bus rider for the 10 years he's commuted to Ann Arbor, or shopping with his family almost exclusively at YFC, he endeavors to make choices in daily life that support the local community, economy, and the environment. 

David thinks Ypsilanti is a unique town, and that our excellent Food Coop has the opportunity to proper and grow into an increasingly integral part of Ypsilanti life.  Contact David.

Paul Fisher is a homeowner and has lived in Ypsilanti for many years.  He has been a member of the Ypsilanti Food Coop for over 10 years.  He has spent five of those years serving on the YFC Board of Directors.  He is currently a special education teacher for the Plymouth-Canton Community Schools.

Paul spent 25 years in software development (20 of them in management) overseeing the development of products. This has meant involvement in finance, publicity, planning, etc.  His five years of on the Board in the past gives him a unique perspective and skills.  He believes strongly in the principles and goals of co-ops and wants to devote his volunteer time and effort to helping the YFC continue to succeed and grow. Contact Paul.

Jeff Clark  was born in 1971 in southern California.  At the University of California Davis, he lived in a student cooperative called The Domes.  He went to the Iowa Writers Workshop for graduate school, and between 1995 and 2004 lived in San Francisco and Oakland, California.  Jeff has published four books of his writing and, since 1996, has made his living as a graphic designer. 

He lives in Ypsilanti with poet and EMU professor Christine Hume and their daughter, Juna Hume Clark.  Jeff is active in progressive local action, parenting, gardening, left culture, food, and graphic design.  Contact Jeff.

Karin Keim has been a long-term member of the Co-op, working and shopping here since 1983. She is married and has two children, Jon & Kait (both of whom “grew up at the Co-op”). Karin earned her CPA license in 1979 and worked at First Federal Savings & Loan, as well as several CPA firms.

Involvement with the Co-op has remained a constant for Karin on a variety of levels throughout the past 28 years: she has provided general office work, helped with inventory, on projects and events, provided accounting and financials for the Board of Directors, done fair shares management, and served on committees.  Working for the Co-op has allowed Karin to keep up with her computer and accounting skills, while still allowing her to spend time with her children as they were growing up.

Along with other long term member-directors, Karin brings organizational memory and continuity to the Board. Contact Karin.

Bill Ayars was raised in rurual Nebraska.  He loves community and the idea of feeding people.  While working in a grocery store in a small town in his teens, Bill realized that people were feeding themselves the wrong way and that, by eating mass-produced foods from far away, they were weakening their communities. He is married to an elementary school administrator. 

Bill moved to Michigan in 2003 and Ypsilanti in 2007.  He has been a Co-op member since 2008.  He is excited about the diverse local agriculture of Michigan and brings marketing expertise to the Board.  He hopes to help make the Co-op’s recent exceptional growth a smooth and positive process.  Bill's day job is in short line railroad marketing and operations for Conrail Shared Assets, which is a part of Norfolk Southern. Contact Bill.

Jesse Tack is the primary organizer of the organization Abundant Michigan/Permaculture Ypsi (AMPY) an active new group working on sustainability.  He is passionate about healing our local food system and increasing its resiliency through planting perennial food-bearing fruit & nut trees. Jesse believes that agriculture as currently practiced is a highly destructive force to humanity, soil biodiversity, and both the plant and animal kingdoms. The AMPY community seeks to build stable, resilient, and regenerative agricultural models of hyper-local food and material production through the use of perennial plants.  

Jesse works as a music therapist in a psychodynamic setting at St. Joesph Hospital. Jesse believes that healing is a holistic process and that his music therapy work and his passion for permaculture design are linked by the motivation to help relieve suffering --both in landscapes and individual lives. Originally from Lapeer, Jesse is passionate about the state of Michigan and believes in the abundance of our 'fresh water' state.

In order for holistic healing to occur, Jesse believes we need to move from a consumptive society towards a production-based society at the local level. "We need to move from a mindset of scarcity and fear, towards a mindset of abundance and the gift economy. Humans can be as beneficial to life processes on Earth as we have been destructive, and we are the only agent on Earth with the ability to cause rapid healing on a large-scale.  Contact Jesse.