Food and Garden Conference Keynote Speaker
Roger Doiron is a powerhouse speaker! He is dynamic, perceptive, playful, visionary and lights a fire under the seats of his listeners to tear up some weeds and be part of the kitchen garden movement!
-Janice O’Rourke, TedxDirigo speaker curator and co- host
This year we brought 7 overseas speakers to Ireland for the GIY Gathering and it brought a brilliant new edge to the proceedings. Roger Doiron, founder of Kitchen Garden International, came all the way from Maine in the US. Roger famously led the campaign to get a veg garden in the White House. At the Gathering, people actually got to their feet and applauded when he finished – you don’t often see that.
-Michael Kelly, Founder, GIY Ireland
Roger Doiron was one of our featured speakers at this year's I Maestri del Paesaggio (International Meeting of the Landscape and Garden) in Bergamo, Italy. Roger is a true inspiration showing that everyone with effort and dedication can accomplish great things.
-Alice Zanchi, Arketipos, Italy
Roger’s presentation at the International Master Gardeners Conference (IMGC) in Las Vegas was totally entertaining and well received. Among other things, people commented on it’s creativity, superb simplicity, and timely message. Not to mention that Roger is a great guy! If we had it to do over again, we’d invite him in a heartbeat.
-Barbara McGibbon, Programs Chairperson, International Master Gardeners Conference, Las Vegas, NV
ACGA was looking for an inspiring speaker to open our national conference. Roger Doiron was the perfect choice. He engaged the audience immediately and set a very motivational tone for the entire conference.
-Beth Urban, Executive Director, American Community Gardening Association
The Alaska Botanical Garden was excited to host Roger Doiron as the keynote speaker for our 2014 Spring Garden Conference. Roger’s talks were informative and inspiring! He engaged the entire audience to think outside the box about how we can impact local food systems in our communities. Conference attendees appreciated Roger’s creativity, energy and timely message. Thank you, Roger, for joining us in our far north corner of the planet!
-Kelly Ingram, Alaska Botanical Garden
Roger’s talk was informative, entertaining and most of all inspiring. His message of a food revolution prodded us all to think differently about our food and where it comes from.
-Hope Dennis, Crawford County Master Gardeners, Illinois
Roger is an engaging presenter, who communicates his passion for gardens and sustainable living with eloquence and enthusiasm. He’s knowledgeable, curious and can read his audience in a blink. He draws people in with poignant questions and facts that are designed to help them see the big picture. All of this is fueled by his contagious sense of purpose and commitment to making our communities greener. Roger plants interesting ideas and empowers you to grow them.
-Melissa Ceria, Director, Art de Vivre programs, French Institute Alliance Française, New York City
Last night’s presentation was great! Your in-depth examination of the subject was appreciated by many, and the audience just loved the humor you threw in. Lots of food for thought in CT last night. Well done!
-Bonnie Penders, Connecticut Horticultural Society
My sincere thanks for your informative, inspirational, all around excellent talk. One advanced student elicited nods of agreement from the whole class when he said it was the best talk he has heard on campus ever. Your presentation connected beautifully with their course material and show them that individual people can and do make a difference. Many many thanks for your presentation and your work with KGI.
--Cheryl Laz, Professor of Sociology, University of Southern Maine
Many thanks for being our keynote speaker last evening at the Cape Elizabeth Land Trust annual meeting. I really enjoyed your talk, and it certainly seemed to me that our members enjoyed it greatly as well. I was seated in the back so I could tell!
-Brigitte Kingsbury, Member of the Advisory Council, Cape Elizabeth Land Trust
We had a wonderful and entertaining hour listening to Roger talk about the food supply in our world and what needs to be done to change it. Roger talks a lot of sense!
-Helena Cook, Incredible Edible Todmorden, UK
Thank you so much for your amazing presentation. It was informative, interesting and fun - everything a great presentation should be. Everyone was delighted!
-Mikal Edwards, Programming Chair, International Study Group, Brussels, Belgium
I would like to thank you for such a great, thought provoking keynote presentation that everyone enjoyed. -Dr. Dorothy Klimis-Zacas, Professor of Clinical Nutrition, University of Maine, Orono & Organizer of “Slow Food: A Model for Sustainable & Healthy Living” conference
We were so fortunate to have Roger speak to us at our Annual Meeting this year. It was interesting and informative to hear about his long campaign to bring private vegetable gardens to national attention, and his efforts to get the White House to plant a food garden. But the presentation went beyond that in being entertaining as well as informative. All of us who met him loved the chance to talk with him personally before or after the presentation, and found the whole event a highlight of our garden club season.
-Margaret Costan, President, Georgetown Garden Club, Washington, DC
We had Roger as our keynote speaker for the York County Master Gardeners Annual Meeting and I would highly recommend him to you as a potential future speaker. He was entertaining, engaging and most inspiring as he promoted his vision for the “grow your own revolution.”
-Frank Wertheim, University of Maine Cooperative Extension
Roger‘s keynote presentation during our staff education retreat was a big hit. We especially enjoyed hearing about his grass roots campaign for an organic garden on the White House lawn. It was impressive to see how a simple idea can be promoted globally with the creative use of new media and social networking, showing us that one good guy with a laptop in a small town in Maine can really move the world. A very interesting, upbeat, informative and inspirational presentation.
-Mary McAteer Kennedy, Director of Dining and Bookstore Services, Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME
Roger’s key-note talk was inspiring, action-packed, and highly entertaining. He offered the crowd an overview of what are current food trends, action steps that people can take, global perspectives and the like through an engaging PowerPoint-based presentation. It is obvious that Roger lives and breathes the work that is KGI’s mission. He is professional and easy to work with; all of our expectations were met and exceeded! We would like to thank him, again, for his wonderful presentation.
-Shey Conover, Island Institute, Rockland, ME
Roger visited Vinalhaven and spoke to a gathering sponsored by the island’s land trust. His presentation was both entertaining and informative, and gave us a lot of food for thought. Even though his message is a dire and serious one, Roger’s can-do enthusiasm energized and empowered the audience.
-Tina Cohen, Vinalhaven Land Trust, Vinalhaven, ME
I had the pleasure of meeting Roger during his presentation at the New York Botanical Garden. As a newbie to the world of gardens and the benefits they bring, I found his discussion quite informative and motivating. Roger’s passion and sincerity to bring awaren of the world’s food situation and help communities achieve greater levels of food self-reliance clearly came across. That he and his organization, Kitchen Gardeners International, have achieved their goal of a White House Kitchen Garden is both amazing and inspiring.
-Elizabeth Ortiz, New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY
Roger Doiron is one of my heroes in the local foods movement! He is a thoughtful and inspiring presenter and practitioner; he is insightful and savvy in creating interactive media and using technology to build networks and momentum; and at the same time he is genuinely down to earth and accessible to diverse groups of people as a speaker and collaborator. We were delighted that he was able to join us for College of the Atlantic’s “Food for Thought, Time for Action” conference.
-Heather Albert-Knopp, Program Administrator, Sustainable Food Systems, College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME
