Biography

Cathryn Couch is the founder and CEO for Ceres Community Project, a non-profit working to foster health by connecting people to one another and to a healthier food system. Ceres provides 150,000+ organic medically tailored meals annually to low-income people struggling because of a health challenge. Youth volunteers grow food and prepare the meals as part of a youth development, culinary and food system education program. Ceres has trained a dozen communities across the United States and in Denmark to replicate their model.

Couch is a founding member of the California Food is Medicine Coalition, a six-agency collaboration conducting the first statewide medically tailored meal pilot for Medicaid members. In 2020-2021 Ceres was one of four agencies that conducted large-scale randomized control trials for medically tailored meals at Kaiser Permanente. Couch is an advisor to the Aspen Institute's Food & Society initiative; a member of the Food Lab at Google; contributed to the Rockefeller Foundation's 2020 Reset the Table report; helps lead Hearts of Sonoma County - a collaborative working to reduce heart attacks and strokes; and participates in Marin HEAL and Marin Food Policy Council, and the California Food & Farming Network.

Couch is a CNN Hero and has been a finalist for The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Community Health Leaders Award, finalist for the James Irvine Leadership Award, and a Red Cross Adult Humanitarian Hero for Northern California. She holds an MBA from the University of Michigan.