Manny Aguilar, a cook who has worked at Northwestern for 23 years, is the winner of the first Real Food Awards in the Worker Leader category.
The Real Food Awards, sponsored by the Real Food Challenge, chose winners from a group of 19 finalists, after looking at votes and comments from 2,000 students and other members of university communities, according to a Real Food Challenge press release.
Finalists were chosen for their notable leadership skills within the dining and worker communities.
They were originally nominated by students from the colleges and universities at which they work.
SESP junior Rebecca Portman nominated Aguilar last year after meeting him when she worked with the NU Living Wage Campaign.
There were five categories of winners in the Real Food Awards: students, faculty, food service managers, cafeteria ‘worker-leaders’ and food producers.
The winners of the awards in the student and worker-leader categories, including Aguilar, will receive a $750 cash prize.
Other winners of the Real Food Awards include the Agriculture and Land Based Training Association, a farming collective that serves as a resource for many California universities; the UMass Amherst Permaculture Committee; Seton Hill University Food Service Director Darren Achtzehn; and Mt. Holyoke University administrator Ruby Maddox-Fisher.
