By Mara Fleishman | CEO
CEO Mara Fleishman shares how a sabbatical gave her fresh perspective on what the Chef Ann Foundation accomplished in 2025, and what lies ahead in 2026.
As I look back on 2025, it feels like the year flew by, and yet held the weight of several lifetimes. It was a year of meaningful growth for the Chef Ann Foundation. It was also a year of personal reflection for me. At 56, I took my first extended break from full-time work since college. I slowed down, reflected, and returned with renewed clarity about leadership, trust, and why this work matters so deeply right now.
2025: National Impact, Real Results
In 2025, the Chef Ann Foundation supported school food programs in every state in the U.S. Our work reached 1,476,484 students across 2,860 schools, supporting 3,394 school food professionals.
Our team of 21 school food operations specialists delivered nearly 2,000 hours of technical assistance, helping districts serve more scratch-made meals. We also supported 700+ apprentices through California Healthy School Food Pathway, granted 166 salad bars, and saw 30,000 resource downloads from The Lunch Box, our online scratch cooking research library.
We further established ourselves as a national leader in school food research, sub-granting $800,000 across four research projects with partners at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Food Insight Group.
We published our policy roadmap, The Scratch Cooking in Schools Solution, outlining our priorities for increasing scratch cooking in schools and expanding access to healthy school meals.
In partnership with the state of California, we completed the second year of the Powered by School Food Professionals campaign. The campaign reached 24 million Californians and increased parent perceptions of school food professionals as skilled and professional by 10 percentage points.
2026: Scaling What Works
We will significantly scale Healthy School Food Pathway, the nation's first registered apprenticeship for school food professionals, expanding from California, Colorado, and Virginia into New York, Michigan, and Arizona. In 2026, we expect to support nearly 1,000 pre-apprentices and apprentices across 100 school districts.
Guided by our policy roadmap, we will deepen our coalition-based advocacy to advance universal school meals, equipment funding, and training and workforce investment at the state level.
We will expand our Values-Aligned Procurement Collectives, which help schools leverage their combined purchasing power to procure ingredients that align with their social and environmental values while reducing administrative burdens and building more resilient, just food systems.
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This work delivers ripple effects far beyond cafeterias: healthier kids, stronger local economies, academic success, and climate-smart food systems. I'm deeply grateful for our school district partners and for the talented, passionate Chef Ann Foundation team making this vision real.
Read the full blog post here: Our Impact in 2025 & the Change We'll Scale in 2026
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