Carol Coren
Portland, Oregon
Her work as Director of Community Programs for Oregon State University’s Portland Food Innovation Center and as a Co-operative Program Specialist and Educator for Rutgers University’s Food Innovation Center engaged her in advancing programs that improved earning and market access opportunities for farmers and for food entrepreneurs, distributors, merchandisers and service enterprise operators. She has worked with agriculture, purchasing and merchandising cooperatives, been active as a member of the Association of Cooperative Educators and been involved in helping Veterans to Farmers groups learn how co-operative models can help vets launch vertical food production businesses.
Her research on shared services cooperatives with scholars at Southern New Hampshire University is aimed at promoting more widespread use of this innovative business operation model on national and international levels. Carol’s interest in health services is long-standing. She has served as a board member or founder of several health-focused organizations including a Pennsylvania Health Systems Agency County Planning Board, a regional Family Planning Council, a Portland, Oregon Community Food Matters network, and a Music Matters International music and art therapy organization.
At the start of the 21st century, she tried to launch a Lifecase EMR enterprise focused on providing patients with easy to access medical portfolios and found herself too far in front of a curve that has now refocused the medical community on procedure codes rather than on care and outcomes.