Meet our staff!
Simon Huntley, Founder & CEO
Simon grew up on a farm in southwestern Pennsylvania before pursuing a degree in Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University. After college, Simon helped a western Colorado fruit farmer expand his operation to include vegetable production and a CSA / farm share program. The project grew to serve five area farmers markets and a 130-member CSA.
Combining his passion for agriculture and technology, he started Small Farm Central in 2006 which now has morphed into Harvie. His goal, and the goal of Harvie, is to help more local farmers become more economically sustainable so they can support their families, take care of their land, treat their employees well and thrive on their farms and in their lives.
Simon has become a thought-leader in the field of local farm marketing. His writing is archived on the Harvie blog, for example CSA: We Have a Path Forward and Local Food Goes Mainstream He has spoken at many farming conferences on topics around marketing local farms. In 2016, he wrote Cultivating Customers: A Farmers Guide to Online Marketing.
Outside of Harvie, Simon is kept active by his two sons, Eliot (age 8) and Theo (age 4). He makes a mean sauerkraut, loves riding his bike to work on Pittsburgh’s North Side, and imagines a world where local food is on everyone’s table.
Kyle Jaster, COO
Kyle focuses on product development and leading our a world-class engineering team. Prior to Harvie, Kyle served as CTO of Freightflow.co, a logistics application for the produce industry. Kyle has served as Chief Product Officer of Noodle.com, a leading education search site growing it from 10,000 to over 1M visitors over the course of his tenure. Kyle has been a major contributor to the open source CRM project CiviCRM, and prior to Noodle served for four years as Production Director for rayogram.com where he helped conceive and develop innovative websites for non-profits and Fortune 500 companies, including the New York State Senate’s constituent management system and Standard & Poor’s MarketScope Advisor.In addition to his work in tech, Kyle is the founder of Atticus Farm, a regenerative, pig-centric farm in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains. He has developed an innovative carbon-neutral feeding program based on locally-produced grains and the byproducts of an on-farm microgreens operation with incredible results in flavor. Atticus Farm produces forest-raised pork, pastured chicken and microgreens for restaurants, and discerning CSA members.
Farm Success Department
Stefanie Jaeger, Farm Success Manager
Stefanie was born and raised in the Ashland, WI area on Lake Superior where gardening, hunting, preserving, and made from scratch cooking was the normal way of life. She has spent over 10 years working in local food in some capacity. Stefanie has successfully managed a wholesale department for local artisan bakery, a local coffee roaster in the Ashland area, and then went on to manage a successful 300 + member cooperative CSA in Northern Wisconsin for almost 4 years. With a background and degrees in Marketing and Business Management, and a passion for helping local food growers and producers thrive, Stefanie has found a natural fit at Harvie. When Stefanie isn’t working, you can find her trail running with her rescue dogs Suki Pooh and Moon Pie, swimming, gardening, paddling, hiking, camping, rock climbing, sailing, cooking, reading, and traveling. Stefanie also serves as a board member for the Lake Superior Sustainable Farming Association and serves on their Harvest Festival planning committee.
Lauren Bradford, Farm Success Specialist
Lauren grew up in a rural area about an hour north of Pittsburgh. After attending Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, she relocated to Pittsburgh’s North Side to pursue a graduate degree at the University of Pittsburgh.
Lauren has over fifteen years’ experience in offering Customer Support to end users of software platforms. She has a passion for learning new technologies and, in turn, passing this knowledge on to end users through authoring user guides, leading training sessions or simply responding to direct requests for assistance. Lauren has worked with software products utilized by public health departments to automatically detect disease outbreaks and also systems offering guidance to oncologists to determine treatment plans for cancer patients.
Now as a member of the Harvie team, Lauren is able to tap into her past experiences to offer exceptional support to the Harvie customer base.
When not assisting Harvie customers or reading up on the latest happenings in the agriculture industry, you’re most likely to find Lauren, a fitness-enthusiast and local gym owner, instructing or participating in group fitness classes like spinning, rowing or heavy bag boxing. Lauren also enjoys distance running, hiking, shopping and spending time with her friends and family.
Mackenzie Nelsen, Farm Success Specialist
Mackenzie is a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she studied Environmental Science and Food Studies. She is joining the team as a Venture for America Fellow (a fellowship that matches recent grads with startups). Mackenzie is passionate about food systems and sustainability and has worked in many different aspects of the food world. Some highlights include interning at a permaculture agroforestry farm in Belize, an internship with Chef Dan Barber at the Farm to Table Restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and a Food Studies Program at the Umbra Institute in Perugia, Italy. In her free time, Mackenzie enjoys hiking, playing soccer, reading and cooking. As a recent transplant, she is excited to explore and get to know Pittsburgh!
Engineering Department
Jon Doron, Lead Software Engineer
Jonathan Doron graduated with a degree in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Since joining Harvie in 2017, he has enjoyed the challenge of building software that connects people with their food and brings them closer to their local farmers. As Jon’s family is predominantly located in Santiago, Chile, he values opportunities to visit them and explore the region. When not traveling, Jonathan enjoys cooking, playing disc golf, and staying up-to-date with the latest trends in software development.
Alex Miron, Software Engineer
Alex was born in Drobeta Turnu-Severin, Romania and has since moved to Brasov, Romania where he works remotely for Harvie as a web developer. He originally became inspired to work in the programming field when he received his first computer as a boy and dreamed of someday creating his own video games. After pursuing a degree in computer science and working as anywhere from a web designer to a cook, Alex found his way back to web developing. As a Harvie developer, Alex mostly focuses on creating the coding for deliveries, sorting farm products, and user preferences, to name a few. He’s excited to be working for Harvie because he has always liked the idea of farming and one day hopes to have a farm of his own. In his free time he enjoys eating tomatoes, swimming, hiking, biking, fishing, and still has a love for video games.
Pablo Barton, Support Engineer
Pablo grew up in Phoenix, AZ before moving to Pittsburgh for education. He’s settled in happily to the hills and rivers: hiking, camping, and kayaking whenever possible. When not working on support for Harvie, he’s probably tinkering with programming and electronics, cooking, experimenting with pickling, gardening, and getting trampled by his two cats (Eddie and Mercury) with boundary issues. Though his formal background is in biological research, Pablo is excited to be working for farms to support sustainable, local agriculture.
Member Support Department
Lucy Angell, Member Support Manager
Lucy was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA and graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with degrees in Psychology and Communications. She has always loved working with others from managing a local restaurant to working as a therapist with children on the autism spectrum. She’s excited to now be working in customer support at Harvie, largely because of the incredible comradery that small, local farms bring to a community. Besides Harvie, Lucy is currently studying to get her degree in American Sign Language Interpreting. In her free time she likes to play soccer, hike, kayak, and travel. She arguably has the cutest cats in Pittsburgh and her favorite vegetable is the Brussels sprout. If you ever get in touch with her, she has a delicious and easy recipe for those little morsels.
Isabella Stone-Dahl, Member Support Specialist
Born and raised on the Bad River Reservation near Ashland, Wisconsin, Isabella was raised in a home that emphasized the importance of culture, traditional lifestyle, and community. Growing up, Isabella participated in seasonal harvests and the work that went into it. Ricing, tapping maple trees, trapping, butchering chickens, smelting and processing other wild game were not foreign ideas to Isabella. As craftspeople, Isabella saw and learned what went into harvesting raw materials from the land in order to make beautiful, useful items and how to build a home. Her parents’ strong commitment to living sustainably and supporting local farms, farmers markets and CSA’s was instilled in her and her siblings from a very young age and has carried through to Isabella as a young adult.
Isabella was homeschooled and had successfully graduated from the Dagoshin Woodland Institute in the spring of 2015. She was active in Sea Scouts where she learned to sail and obtained scuba certification. As a result, she taught sailing through North Coast Community Sailing and crewed on the 52’ schooner, the “Abbey Road”. Isabella has been actively working in the community since the age of 16, providing office assistance at the local birth center, lawn care and outside maintenance for an elderly couple, and helping to restore boats at a local wooden boat repair shop. More recently, Isabella has provided awesome customer service as a cashier at the local food cooperative while servicing animals at the local humane society before becoming the weekend manager at the famed local coffee shop and eatery – the Black Cat. Isabella’s years of customer service experience has led her to Harvie, where she works in customer support, helping people connect with the local farms in their respective areas.
When Isabella has time off, she enjoys the outdoors, traveling, painting, making and drinking coffee, watching psychological thrillers/crime dramas, and, of course, eating good food. In the future, Isabella hopes to move to the West Coast with her partner, Alex, and dog, Charlie, and continue to travel and adventure where life takes her.
Katie Black, Member Support Specialist
Katie was raised on a century family farm in Middle TN where she still resides. As an 8th generation farmer, she has spent the majority of her life playing in the dirt, working cattle, and loving life on the farm! Using her background in education and agribusiness, Katie has made the farm not only her workplace, but an entrepreneur’s playground thanks to her grandmother who taught her it is okay to think outside of the box when you have acres to dream. She started the first CSA program in her area and continues to provide the community with great locally grown produce each summer. Teaming up with her mother, she has hosted numerous events including weddings, class reunions, agricultural workshops, and field trips at the farm’s event venue. Katie was raised by farmers and truly believes the best people in the land are those working it.
When not working for Harvie or playing on the farm, you will find Katie chasing her two-year-old son Owen, coaching cheerleading, or eating Mexican food. She also loves to read, but lately, most of her books have been ABCs and 123s!