Arlene is the founder and Executive Director of Terroir Hospitality, which curates an annual Symposium in Toronto each spring that is a catalyst for creative collaboration and social and environmental responsibility in the hospitality industry. The Toronto Symposium brings together 1,000 hospitality professionals from across North America for a three-day program based on meeting local producers, learning new ideas and creating connections in a network that shares in the principals of nurturing local food systems.  Since 2013, Arlene has worked to bring her community-building programs across the globe, executing knowledge-sharing events in New York, Charleston, Berlin, Budapest, Warsaw Tuscany and Beijing.

Arlene worked for 10 years at the prestigious Hart House at the University of Toronto as the Director of Catering and Events. There she pioneered hospitality programs, which included the themes: Food Justice, Urban Agriculture and Sustainability.  She subsequently opened the Center for Sustainable Cities in the heart of Toronto, as the Director of Programs at Evergreen Brick Works and continued her work in developing food systems and urban agriculture, as well as developing programs in eco-literacy and urban health and wellness. At Evergreen, she managed a team that animated onsite programs, including Toronto’s largest farmers market, and she drove the organizational strategy that helped to educate the public on creating sustainable urban food environments.  

Committed to ideas of regionality, sustainability and food justice, Arlene has worked to develop and curate programs based on these foundational principals for food service and hospitality leaders. Arlene was the former co-convivium leader of Slow Food Toronto and sat on the board for Savour Toronto, an initiative to drive culinary tourism to Toronto. She has been a speaker, moderator, writer and film maker on issues driving sustainable and community-based food initiatives. Arlene believes that through educating hospitality professionals and looking at food systems through a terroir-based approach (focused on a region’s environment, history and culture) that we can bring diverse peoples together through culinary diplomacy, with food leaders as our ambassadors.