Roger Doiron is the founder and director of SeedMoney, a Maine-based nonprofit that helps public food gardens thrive through grants, training, and crowdfunding. Since 2015, SeedMoney has enabled more than 3,000 gardens to launch or sustain themselves, reaching over 980,000 people across the United States and around the world.
A longtime advocate for kitchen gardens and food sovereignty, Roger led the “Eat the View” campaign that helped persuade the Obamas to plant the first White House vegetable garden since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Garden. His campaign gathered more than 100,000 signatures, won the grand prize in the UN Foundation’s On Day One contest, and earned him recognition as one of Fast Company’s “10 Most Inspiring People in Sustainable Food” and one of the Huffington Post’s top five “Green Game Changers.” He has also received the Heart of Green and Garden Crusader awards for his leadership in the sustainable food movement.
In addition to his advocacy work, Roger is a freelance writer and public speaker whose articles have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, Organic Gardening, Mother Earth News, and Saveur. His work and ideas have been featured by The New York Times, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, International Herald Tribune, and NPR. He is also the speaker behind the TEDx talk “My Subversive (Garden) Plot.”
Roger brings an international perspective to his local efforts. In the 1990s, he directed the Brussels office of Friends of the Earth during Europe’s mad cow crisis, and in 2002 he served on the U.S. NGO delegation to the United Nations World Food Summit in Rome. His advocacy career was launched in part by his selection as a Food and Society Fellow through the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Holy Cross College, Roger holds a master’s degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He continues to write about the intersection of food, sustainability, and philanthropy.
Today, Roger finds joy in tending a smaller home garden and spending time outdoors with his wife, sons, and grandson. Both his personal life and nonprofit work reflect a growing interest in helping others discover abundance through simplicity, sustainability, and authentic connection.
