Amazing Mom: Liz Snyder

by Honey Berk (Subscribe to Honey Berk's posts)
May 9th 2010 12:01AM

Filed under: Work Life, Activities: Babies, Nutrition: Health, Day Care & Education, Mealtime, Resources, Single Parenting, Amazing Parents

Liz Snyder wants her daughter, and all kids and moms, to eat healthy. Credit: Lilia Schwartz

Amazing Mom: Liz Snyder, founder of Full Circle Farm, an 11-acre organic, educational farm; development manager for Collective Roots, a California nonprofit organization that runs food gardening programs; and a holistic family food coach.

Liz's Family: Partner: John Beall, together for two years; Kid: Helen, 5

Liz Lives In: Mountain View, California

Why Liz Is Amazing: Picky eaters, beware. Liz Snyder is out to change your eating habits. In an effort to get children to be healthy, adventurous eaters who love their veggies, she's devoted herself to several food-related causes.

Three years ago, Liz founded Full Circle Farm, an 11-acre organic, educational farm that connects the Santa Clara, Calif. school district's 14,000 children directly to the source of their food. The organization also helps young people develop job and life skills through hands-on agricultural and entrepreneurial experiences.

Her other hat is designed to help moms who have their own battles with food. Combining her Oxford education in nutritional anthropology and her certification as a bio-intensive gardener, she's known as a holistic family food coach, helping women with eating issues learn to help their kids develop positive relationships with food.

"One of the most commonplace and unspoken experiences of being a woman is to really hate your body and to believe that by changing what you eat that will somehow change," Liz explains. "It's really more about finding a joyful, healthy relationship with food for yourself as a parent and then translating that healthy relationship to your child."

Add one more job description to Liz's already accomplished career: Development manager for East Palo Alto, Calif.-based Collective Roots, a nonprofit organization that runs food gardening programs for youth and communities, integrating gardening into the school day to help teach kids about healthy eating, reinforce math and science concepts and provide healthy spaces for kids to play.

How does she possibly do it all?

She credits her ability to juggle her many roles to the immense support she gets from her family. She lives in a multi-generational household, as the home she shares with her daughter is on the same property as that of her parents and 93-year-old grandfather.

"There's been a very quiet revolution," Liz says, "that moms can really make a living for themselves by setting their own hours and their own standards."

Liz's Daughter Helen Says: "My favorite thing about my mom is that she plants flowers and things with me. Right now we're planting strawberries!"

Recognition: Liz was named one of Kiwi Magazine's 2009 "Moms of the Revolution."

Liz's Guilty Pleasures: Cheesecake is at the top of the list, followed by the TV show "Glee". She's a self-proclaimed, former choir geek.

Liz's Best Advice: Trust your intuition -- because it's a powerful, powerful thing -- and give up the idea that everything you do has to be perfect.

Related: Amazing Mom: Lorna Stuart