Food Safety Consultant
Nancy Simonds-Ruderman is a food safety consultant for “Safe Food of the Berkshires.” She has trained and certified thousands of hospitality professionals throughout the Berkshires, greater New England, and New York on the importance of safe food handling and sanitation in the work place.
Simply stated, Nancy’s background and approach is to educate and share knowledge and information about food safety, and how it is everyone’s responsibility to provide “safe food” to their dining public.
For more than 20 years, Nancy was a professor in Hospitality Management at Berkshire Community College. In addition, she has over 15 years experience as a Food Inspector and Health Agent. She has worked many positions in the food production and service industry, spanning health care and corporate environments.
Nancy has been awarded many grants and awards from private, state, and federal initiatives for curriculum design, training program development, food safety work place initiatives, and joint educational partnerships.
She spoke at the American Culinary Federation national conference on HACCP programs. In 2006 she was awarded the National Restaurant Association teacher scholarship to write a food quality and safety training manual. In addition, Nancy was the first inspector in Central and Western MA to complete the Boston University’s School of Public Health MAPHIT program. Through this program she has introduced a collaborative effort plan for several jurisdictions in Berkshire County to enroll and implement the FDA Voluntary Retail Standards Program as part of the retail food inspection process.
Moving forward, Nancy hopes to “field train” other inspectors who have joined the standards program and continue to promote a county-wide retail food standardized inspection program that focuses on food-borne illness prevention and risk factor intervention. In addition, she is passionate about supporting and promoting the “local food” movement in a safe and cost effective way, along with teaching alternative “green” operational methods to hospitality businesses. Nancy earned her Bachelor of Science degree in education (Foods and Nutrition) from Keene State College, and a Master’s degree in Instructional Technology (Training and Development) from Rochester Institute of Technology.