Timothy’s Bio

Timothy Fitzgerald Young is founder of Food For Thought, Inc., creators of organic and wild-harvested gourmet specialty foods. For three consecutive years, Young was invited to Bon Appetit magazine’s acclaimed Wine and Spirits Festival in Chicago, which showcases many of the best chefs in the Midwest.

An extensive background in travel and human relief work in the developing world inspired Timothy’s creation of Food For Thought in 1995, with the mission of creating and raising awareness around just and sustainable food systems and to serve as a model to counter the global industrial food system.

In addition to creating exciting products from the farms and forests 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 and vice chair of the Michigan Land Use Institute (now known as the Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities), he has served as president of the Benzie County Chamber of Commerce and is a board member of the Northwestern Michigan College Foundation.

Passionate about Fair Trade, Timothy was a founding board member of both the Domestic Fair Trade Association and On The Ground, a nonprofit supporting sustainable community development in farming regions around the world.

His awards include Environmentalist of the Year and Environmental Business of the Year. He was voted Best Local Hero by a reader’s poll in Traverse City’s weekly news magazine, the Northern Express and was honored by the Traverse City Business News as a, “Green Pioneer” of northwest Michigan. In 2008, Food For Thought was featured on the Food Network, won “Benzie County Business of the Year,” and was designated one of the 50 Michigan Companies to Watch by the Edward Lowe Foundation.

Food For Thought was founded 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 he lives with his wife, Kathy, and children Stella and Connor.

Timothy grew up in Flint, MI 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.”

For more, visit his Facebook Page.