Avery Ashley is an FCS agent in Brunswick County and SafePlates distinguished educator in home food preservation. Avery has taught numerous fermentation classes as an FCS agent and as an instructor at Meredith College, and is passionate about fermentation as a preservation practice and hobby.

Margie Mansure is an Extension Agent, Registered Dietitian/Nutritionist, and Culinary School graduate who serves Watauga and Caldwell counties. She promotes consumption of local and healthy foods to consumers by collaborating on community development projects with organizations and interested individuals. Margie would rather be in a kitchen than an office, offering hands-on cooking classes, food preservation classes, demonstrations, and testing/tweaking recipes. She loves to hike, bicycle and travel to places that are as beautiful as the High Country.

Kim Terrell is the Family and Consumer Science Agent for both Macon and Clay counties as well as the Extension Director for Clay County.  Kim has spent most of her career as a Registered Dietitian in the healthcare arena.  She started in Extension in 2020 and wishes she would have discovered her Extension career a lot sooner, as it has turned out to be the most fulfilling job she has ever had.  Kim lives in Franklin with her husband, Brian.  They have 3 wonderful children, Andrew, Andrea and Anderson and a Golden Retriever named Cooper.  Kim enjoys spending time outdoors, spending time with her family and attending all of her kid's sporting events. 

Award-winning food/lifestyles writer for magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens, Country Living, Romantic Homes and many more, Gail Greco has written 16 of her own cookbooks, plus more for chefs and home cooks. She has produced numerous photos and food videos for DuPont’s non-stick cookware surfaces’ social media platforms and taught media communications at the State University of New York (SUNY). Recipes from her new cookbook, Afternoon Tea is the New Happy Hour, will be served during our own happy hour this weekend.

Cynthia Fissell has been a Level II Regulatory Specialist with the NC Department of Agriculture for 10 years. Before moving to NC, she was a Supervisor for the FL Department of Agriculture, Food Safety Division, for 14 years. She enjoys educating people and helping with the growth of their business.

Kristina Mabe is a Level I Food Regulatory Specialist with the NCDA & CS Food and Drug Protection Division. She has been with this department 8 years, and was with the NCDA Meat and Poultry Division for 2 years prior. She currently inspects retail grocery stores and dollar stores, in addition to retail and wholesale bakery’s, breweries and wineries. She also helps with home processing inspections.

Tracy began her career working with older adults for 11 years serving as an Activities Director, a Health Promotions Coordinator, and Senior Center Director.  Moving to Extension was an exciting change that brought her back to her field of study in Home Economics, her love of community work, and an opportunity to serve people of all ages. She retired last year from Rutherford County Cooperative Extension after 28 years as an FCS Agent.

Niki has been an FCS agent in Yancey County since June 2021. She has been with Extension since 2018, working with the NC State Healthy Living team as a Program Assistant for the Empowering Youth and Families Program in Yancey and Mitchell Counties before becoming an FCS Agent. Before her career in Extension, she spent over ten years working with families in Guilford and Forsyth Counties as an Early Childhood Educator. Now with her own family, Niki is a wife and a mom to two beautiful girls and advocates for strong families. She serves on the Mitchell-Yancey Substance Abuse Task Force and the Avery-Mitchell-Yancey Parent Education Advisory Council advisory boards, addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences and breaking unhealthy generational cycles. Currently a graduate student in the Place-Based Public Health program through UNC Gillings, she doesn’t have a ton of free time. Still, when she does, you can find her outside exploring nature with her family, doodling or creating, or finding a moment alone in the car to jam out to some classics from the ’80s and ’90s. 

Nikki Kurdys works with County Extension employees in all 100 counties in NC and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, she has 22+ years of experience in HR at NC State University. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Management from NC State and a Master's degree in HR Development from Western Carolina. Besides her regular HR duties, she is a trained Mediator with the State of NC, a Clifton Strengths Coach, a University Wellness Champion, and a Mental Health First Aid Instructor. When not at work, Nikki enjoys multiple outdoor activities, including golf, kayaking, hiking, and gardening. 

Jessica is the FCS Agent in Madison County and has been an extension agent for 2 years. She is a Registered Dietitian, and of course a foodie, but also loves spending free-time outside and exploring rural and urban landscapes alike.

Sally Wimberley, MS, RD, LDN, has been a dietitian for ten years and has worked in long term care, surgical weight loss, undergraduate education, and outpatient nutrition counseling. Sally graduated from North Carolina State University (NCSU) with a B.S. in Nutrition Science and went on to pursue her M.S in Nutrition Science from the Sage Colleges. Her areas of interest include maternal, infant, and childhood nutrition, general wellness, chronic health concerns, eating disorders and disordered eating, post-bariatric support, and more. Sally lives on Beech Mtn with her husband, four-year-old daughter, and two dogs, and when she is not working loves snowboarding, hiking, baking, home renovations and being with her family.

Morgan Marshall is the Extension Master Food Volunteer Program Manager and Local Foods Communications Assistant and has been serving with Extension for almost 10 years, formerly as an FCS Agent. She loves working with agents to support their programming and volunteer management and encouraging local food support across NC. In her free time she loves reading, physical activity, cooking, and spending time outdoors with her husband, Sam, her 3.5 year old son, Charley, and her sweet pup, Hadley. 

Craig Mauney has worked as an Extension agent for the NC Cooperative Extension for over 25 years. He is presently the Extension Area Specialized Agent in commercial vegetable and fruit production in the 39 Western most counties of North Carolina. 

He graduated from Berea College, Berea, Kentucky, with a BS Degree in Agriculture and has a lot of experience in all aspects of commercial vegetable and fruit production, home gardening, and landscape design. His special interests are woodland botanicals and unusual edibles like pawpaw. He grew up in the mountains of Western North Carolina in Cherokee County, where he had a small sustainable farm for many years. He now has a small forest farm in Zirconia, NC – Shady Hollow Farm. 

Craig also worked in the Piedmont of North Carolina for many years as a Commercial Fruit and Vegetable Agent and Urban Horticulture Agent, which gave him experience working with farmers, homeowners, and Extension Master Gardeners in 

Forsyth County. He is the past Director of the Arboretum at Tanglewood in Clemmons and was the Head Horticulturist for Wake Forest University. He is known in the Piedmont area for writing for the Winston-Salem Journal and other regional magazines.

Dara Bloom is an associate professor and Local Foods Extension Specialist at NC State University. She is also Director of Community Based Food Systems for the Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS). Dara was inspired by her time doing community gardening on the US/Mexican border to learn about the structure and policies of the larger agri-food system, as well as how community-based projects can enhance local food security. Dara earned her degree in Rural Sociology at Penn State University, with a focus on the Sociology of Agriculture and Food Systems. Her graduate research revolved around the challenges and opportunities of “scaling up” local food systems, including the interactions between social, environmental, and economic values as alternative movements are incorporated into conventional systems. Her current work includes providing support through Cooperative Extension and CEFS to develop local food value chains as part of community-based local food projects that integrate low-resource consumers and support local farmers. This has included exploring how to strengthen immigrant/refugee communities’ capacity to participate in local food production and preparation, and how to connect food pantries with local food sources. She is currently conducting research about how to build relationships between local farmers and childcare centers and senior centers.

Nicole McManus, MSW, LCSW graduated from Western Carolina University in 2013 with a Bachelor of Social Work and Appalachian State University in 2018 with a Master of Social Work. She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Nicole utilizes CBT, SFT, Motivational Interviewing, and mindfulness practices as a social worker with The Counseling Group.

Patrice Dollar serves the Cooperative Extension Program at North

Carolina Agricultural and Technical University as the Family Resource Management – Extension Associate.  She provides leadership in programming for limited-resource audiences and youth financial literacy.

Prior to joining N.C. A & T she served as the regional coordinator for Lincoln University in St. Louis, MO, state specialist for the University of Georgia and regional specialist for the University of Missouri.  Her work includes financial education programs for limited-resource, high risk, diverse families, and individuals in rural and urban areas as they work to improve their self-sufficiency.

Dr. Dollar has training in financial planning and education, essential coaching skills, leadership development, and program development. 

Dr. Dollar’s degrees are:

B.S. in Family and Consumer Science – Fort Valley State

M.S in Consumer Economics – Iowa State University

CFP Certification – College of Financial Planning

Dr. Stephan van Vliet is a nutrition scientist with metabolomics expertise in the Center for Human Nutrition Studies at Utah State University. Dr. Stephan van Vliet earned his PhD in Kinesiology as an ESPEN Fellow from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and received training at the Washington University in St Louis School of Medicine and Duke University School of Medicine. Dr. van Vliet’s research is performed at the nexus of agricultural and human health. He routinely collaborates with farmers, ecologists, and agricultural scientists to study critical linkages between agricultural production methods, the nutrient density of food, and human health. In his work, Dr. van Vliet uses metabolomics and proteomics to study the presence of bioactive compounds in foods and their impacts on human metabolic health. His work has been published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Scientific Reports, the Journal of Nutrition, and the Journal of Physiology.

High Country Yoga has a broad spectrum of classes offered so that you can come in and get just what you need on a day-to-day basis.  Every class is taught to accommodate practitioners of all skill levels.  Check out their website!

Nick Barr is the Chef de Cuisine of Chai Pani Asheville, the James Beard Award winner for Outstanding Restaurant in 2022. Nick took the helm in 2024, seven years after joining Chai Pani Restaurant Group. Growing up on the North Carolina coast then the piedmont, Nick began his restaurant and chef career in the mountains. After working nearly a decade with a restaurant chain, Nick became obsessed with local agriculture and left his job as General Manager to work in permaculture. Nick pursued a variety of agriculture endeavors like starting his own condiments business, delivery service and family CSA, before joining the kitchen team at Buxton Hall Barbecue in 2017. He was GM at the beloved Nani's Piri Piri Chicken from 2020-2022, and then returned to lead the Buxton Hall kitchen for its final two years of service. Nick lives on his own Big Ivy Little Farm in Weaverville, NC, with his partner and their chickens, goats and homestead hogs.