Our Main "Moovers"

Gary Hirshberg - Chairman, President and CE-Yo, Stonyfield Farm

Gary Hirshberg is Chairman, President, and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm, the world’s leading organic yogurt producer, based in Londonderry, New Hampshire.  The author of  Stirring It Up: How to Make Money and Save the World (Hyperion Books, January, 2008), he is a world-renowned speaker on topics including sustainability, climate change, the profitability of green business, organic agriculture, socially responsible business and sustainable economic development.

For the past 26 years, Gary has overseen Stonyfield Farm’s phenomenal growth, from its infancy as a seven-cow organic farming school in 1983 to its current $320 million in annual sales. Stonyfield has enjoyed a compounded annual growth rate of over 24% for more than eighteen years, by consistently producing great-tasting products and using innovative marketing techniques that blend the company’s social, environmental, and financial missions.

In 2001, Stonyfield Farm entered into a partnership with Groupe Danone, and in 2005, Gary was named managing director of Stonyfield Europe, a joint venture between the two firms with brands in Canada, Ireland, and France.

Gary joined Stonyfield Farm a few months after its start in 1983. Initially, he directed the Rural Education Center, the small organic farming school from which Stonyfield was spawned. Previously, in addition to serving as a trustee of the farming school, Gary had served as executive director of The New Alchemy Institute – a research and education center dedicated to organic farming, aquaculture, and renewable energy.

A New Hampshire native, Gary was one of the first graduates of Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, and has received seven honorary doctorates and was named a Gordon Grand Fellow at Yale University.

Gary has won numerous awards for corporate and environmental leadership, including Global Green USA's “1999 Green Cross Millennium Award for Corporate Environmental Leadership.” He was named "Business Leader of the Year" by Business NH Magazine and "New Hampshire's 1998 Small Business Person of the Year" by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Gary serves on several corporate and non-profit boards including Applegate Farms, the Dannon Company, Honest Tea, Peak Organic Brewing Company, The Full Yield, Climate Counts, Express Soccer Club, Stonyfield Europe, Ltd, Glenisk, Ltd and the Danone Communities Fund. He is the chairman and co-founder of O’Naturals, a natural fast food restaurant company.  He served on the advisory panel for Newsweek magazine's Global Environmental Leadership Conference and as an Advisor to Renewal Partners LLC, Solera Capital, the Heinz Center Leadership Summit and the Corporate Ecoforum.

Samuel Kaymen - Retired Founder, Stonyfield Farm

Samuel Kaymen, Founder of Stonyfield Farm, was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He studied Chemistry at Brooklyn College and Electrical Engineering at City College of New York. In the 1960’s he founded Spacewhite Industries, Inc., which built clean rooms for the Aerospace Industry. He is founder and past President of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter of the American Association for Contamination Control.

In the 1970’s he studied Bio-Dynamic Agriculture with Herbert Koepf and Peter Escher. He went on to serve as a Director on the board of the Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening Association. In 1971 he founded the Northeast Organic Farmers Association (NOFA) and served as President for ten years. Samuel founded and served as Director of The Rural Education Center, an organic farming school in Wilton, NH. He served on the administrative council of The Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (NESARE) program of the USDA for three years.

He is presently the Vice-President of EARTH University Foundation, a private, non-profit, international University contributing to the sustainable development of the humid tropics through education in the agricultural sciences and natural resources.

Samuel founded Stonyfield Farm in 1983. Samuel, his wife Louise and their six children milked, fed and cared for the small herd of Jersey cows, and made the first batches of Stonyfield FarmYogurt in a little room off their barn. After 17 years in the yogurt-making business, Samuel is going out to pasture with the rest of the cows!

Samuel and Louise are growing their own food, cutting their own firewood and getting their electricity from the sun. They are the grandparents of six beautiful, lively children, who are being raised on Stonyfield Farm Yogurt!



Kasi Reddy, Vice President of Research & Development and Quality Assurance

You might say Kasi Reddy bought his way into the company. That is to say, he had to pay for his own dinner while co-founder Samuel Kaymen interviewed him for the job. This was in Wisconsin, where Kasi lived and Kaymen was in town doing other Stonyfield business. Kasi also had to pay his own plane fare to come to New Hampshire for a second interview, and Kaymen told him he would not be reimbursed for the expense if he didn’t get the job.

Well, Kasi did get the job, got reimbursed for the ticket, and he has stayed on for a full 10 years, overseeing the dramatic reformulation of the entire Stonyfield product line. “We knew that the majority of American consumers liked sweet and dessert-type products and did not like typically very tart-tasting yogurts. Therefore, we set out to reformulate all our products to be very mild and less tart, so that we could lure non-yogurt consumers to healthy and mild-tasting yogurt products. This was a very radical and rather risky approach from a Research and Development and total company standpoint and it was the boldest decision a CEO could make…which was also against the conventional wisdom followed by other yogurt companies.”

Not only did Kasi convince CE-Yo Gary to go this route on theory, the Research and Development team was able to pull it off. They came up with a great-tasting product which now has the longest shelf life of any yogurt product in the world, without using any preservatives. Kasi is thrilled.



Steve Inamorati, Vice President of Supply Chain and Logistics

Steve stepped out of college about 13 years ago and came directly to his job at Stonyfield Farm, where he is now Vice President of Supply Chain and Logistics. Basically his job is to make sure we have everything we need to produce yogurt here in our plant, which operates around the clock. He has an MBA from New Hampshire College (now called Southern New Hampshire University). He is married with an 8-year-old daughter and 4-year-old son, which can present a challenge because of his demanding work. “Being responsible for a 24/7 operation, there is always something going on that keeps my mind on work,” he says. Nevertheless, he likes the constant challenge and the changing projects. “It’s never boring.”

Steve wears many hats. “The most challenging part of my job in regards to the mission is purchasing and trying to make sure we are always purchasing the most environmentally friendly materials and packaging. The other main area is in employee well being. I think it is very important to make sure people are happy in their jobs and that they have growth opportunities, as I have.”

Today, producing 17 million (and counting) cups of yogurt a month requires lots of automation, obviously. But Steve likes to tell this story about Samuel Kaymen, a co-founder of Stonyfield Farm. “Shortly after I started here back in 1991, there was a batch of product in the incubator that was not incubating, so to speak. (Milk turns to yogurt in the cups by means of heating.) The product had not been inoculated with culture, so Samuel grabbed me and said he needed help with something. I proceeded to help Samuel open every cup (approx. 15,000 cups) and add a spoonful of culture to each cup so we could salvage the product. This was back before the time of tamper-evident packaging (and before we had the foil lids, which are not re-sealable!).



Nancy, Vice President of Natural Resources

Somehow a three-month, short-term job to start the Stonyfield Farm Visitor’s Center (Yogurt Works) turned into 13 years at the company for Nancy Hirshberg, whose formal training was in Environmental Education and Plant and Soil Sciences. She now oversees the environmental initiatives at Stonyfield, including working with organic farmers and suppliers. B.S. (Before Stonyfield) she worked with non-profits, business, and the federal government, on a farm and with the U.S. Forest Service in Alaska. Her experience teaching middle-schoolers, however, was the best preparation for anything. “You learn patience,” she says. Nancy often has direct contact with the dairy farmers who supply Stonyfield, and she considers this the best part of her job. “They keep me grounded, give me hope and inspire me!” she says of the farmers.

Once upon time, Nancy dressed up as a dancing cup of yogurt for a consumer event, an experience she still claims was fun. Besides that, she is proudest of starting Stonyfield’s organic program, which now generates over $100 million in annual sales! “When we started in 1994, there were many barriers and a great deal of resistance from many people. When I visit the dairy farmers who provide us with organic milk and see the amazing work they are doing, and how excited they are about it- and that it’s such a huge improvement for their family- it makes me feel great. But there's plenty of work still ahead!!!”

Lately Nancy has been sharing the Dr. Seuss’s book The Lorax, one of her favorites, with her two-year-old daughter. She credits the book The Closing Circle, by Barry Commoner, as the most influential book she’s read, turning her at age 19 onto the path of environmental stewardship.


Diane Carhart, Chief Financial Officer

As Stonyfield Farm’s Chief Financial Officer, Diane Carhart has seen a lot of changes in her 12 years with the company. In the beginning, the company's annual revenues were about $10 million per year and now we’re somewhere near the $163 million mark. We’ve purchased another company to boot. Diane oversees just about anything having to do with numbers and profits. She does the “finance functions” for accounting, credit, audit, reporting and tax, internal control, treasury, planning and analysis. She oversees the I.S. group, Human Resources and Office Administration, and also gets involved with insurance and legal questions. Whew! One of the funniest stories she recalls from her Stonyfield days is the adventure of attempting to open up Russian ice cream markets. About $750,000 later, and following numerous business"meetings" with Russian mafia types, Gary finally decided that he'd rather be alive than continue with that ill-conceived venture. “And we have spent our time since taking advantage of the many opportunities right here in the U.S.

The rapid pace of growth at Stonyfield Farm presents Diane with challenges she both enjoys and finds difficult. “Balancing all the aspects of growth - people, skills, equipment, facilities, investments in sales and marketing - and financial constraints has always been an interesting challenge. Sometimes there are one or two areas of the company that are developing at a faster pace than others, and we (in the Finance group) are not able to support them as well as we would like - either with business analysis or sometimes new hires. I also dislike signing checks!” she said.

Diane and her twin daughters are fans of the Harry Potter series of books, and her most recent favorite adult read was Leif Enger’s “Peace Like a River.” She also enjoys the classics of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Manchild in the Promised Land.”

Rolf Carlson, Vice President of Purchasing

After 21 years with The Dannon Company, Rolf Carlson decided to give his yogurt career an organic twist. In 2006, Rolf brought his accounting, finance, manufacturing and engineering know-how to our company to become our purchasing guru.

Rolf is in charge of locating and buying the milk, fruit, packaging and other supplies we need to meet the fast-growing demand for our products. Of course, he’s also responsible for purchasing these things in ways that protect the environment and support sustainable agriculture.

“Stonyfield Farm isn’t just another company in business,” says Rolf. “We have a supply chain we can be proud of.”

Rolf and his wife have four daughters and a son. While Rolf says he and his wife are both “musically impaired,” one of their daughters plays the clarinet and bass, another plays the cello, another plays the viola, and the youngest girl plays the piano. His son likes baseball and basketball, and dad likes to help him practice. Rolf also enjoys hiking.

Growing up in the history-rich Hudson River Valley, Rolf developed a taste for American revolutionary history. He enjoys history books, historic novels and travel. “I like seeing historic places,” he says, “our connections to the past.”

Alice Markowitz, Vice President of Communications

A vice president of communications tells the company's story to the world. And in this day and age, who better to tell our story than a multiple Emmy Award winning film-maker? And who better to talk to the media than someone who has worked the other side?

Before joining us in 2006, Alice Markowitz traveled the world, writing, producing and directing documentaries for public television, including NOVA and Scientific American Frontiers. She has her all-time favorite, Still/Here, a feature profile of choreographer and dancer Bill T. Jones. But she got the two big awards for a Bill Moyers film on Chinese medicine and another on New Hampshire poets Donald Hall and the late Jane Kenyon.

A Stonyfield Farm yogurt lover from way back, Alice was present at the birth of the company, taste-testing early products (some never to be mass produced), loading trucks in the middle of the night and weighing in on her favorite cow label. (She liked the one with the beret.)  She swears that her iron stomach and strong bones are a direct result of eating our yogurt every day. (A scientific study of one!)

Alice has a BA in psychology and a MA in education, both of which are desperately needed when driving in the Boston area where she lives. She likes Asian food, swimming across Walden Pond, foreign films, Irish plays and modern dance, not that she has enough time for any of these.

“People think I work here at Stonyfield Farm because I believe that business can be a positive force for change in the world,” she says with a twinkle. “But, really, it’s the apricot mango yogurt.”

Esteve Torrens, Vice President of Marketing

Esteve Torrens became our VP of Marketing in the summer of 2007. Before joining us, Esteve (or “Steve”) was managing director of Stonyfield Europe. A native of Barcelona, he’s held a variety of senior management and marketing positions with Danone in Spain, Argentina, and France, and he continues to oversee Stonyfield France. Steve and his wife Meritxell Cequier (nicknamed “Txell”, pronounced “Chell”) and their very young son Alex live in Andover, Massachusetts.

Mike Johnson, Vice President of Sales

Whether you’re talking yogurt sales or soccer, it’s tough to put one by Mike Johnson. Once a record-setting soccer goalie (and basketball center) at Drew University in Madison, NJ, Mike came to us from the Dannon Company in September of 2007 to become our VP of sales.

During his four years at Dannon, Mike held a variety of senior sales roles including vice president of grocery sales. During his four years in college, he set a number of athletic records including most soccer saves in a season (137).

Before his work with Dannon, Mike was with Campbell Soup, where he progressed from retail representative to vice president of southeastern US sales. He also stands six-feet-seven and his portrait hangs in his alma mater’s Athletic Hall of Fame. In other words, Mike is just the sort of athlete you want setting your sales goals, and just the sort of sales VP you want in goal at the company soccer tournament.

In addition to his Drew University degree, Mike holds an MBA from Syracuse University. He and his wife Elizabeth have three daughters, and he’s the only non-vegetarian in the house. One of Mike’s passions outside of work is coaching his daughters’ soccer and basketball teams. He also enjoys reading history books.