Lesly Baesens is the Food Waste Recovery Program Administrator for the City and County of Denver in the Department of Public Health and Environment. Previously, Lesly worked in project management, stakeholder engagement, and policy analysis for the Open Government Partnership, a Washington, DC-based organization. Lesly became interested in food waste during the course of her Master’s in Global Environmental Policy, and wrote her capstone project on food waste reduction. The paper provided Washington, DC with 20 recommendations to improve its food waste reduction practices, several of which now feature in the city’s sustainability plan. Lesly also volunteered with the DC Food Recovery Working Group, an organization working on food waste reduction in the nation’s capital.