Who We Are

Terra Soma, LLC is a woman/Native American owned agency. Our clients often require complex, diverse, and substantial expertise and capacity. We bring certifications*, academic training, and deep experience and are good at being creative, collaborative, thoughtful, and kind partners. We have offices in the Twin Cities and Washington state.

Terra Soma is certified as a woman and minority owned business, recognized by the Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul and Hennepin and Ramsey Counties. We also are certified by the State of Minnesota's Office of State Procurement as a Targeted Group small business.

Meet Our Team

Margaret Adamek, PHD - CEO

Maggi blends her skills as an organizer, network weaver, adult learning expert, capacity builder, social change movement designer, strategic communicator, and facilitator to equip and empower diverse communities to thrive. Nationally recognized for her unique, impact-oriented approach to helping people and partnerships create healthy communities, Maggi provides clients with clear, strategic counsel and comprehensive, creative support as they execute initiatives designed to benefit the public good. Maggi serves on the American Swedish Institute’s Board of Directors and is a former Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow.

Karl Lorenz, Chief Creative Officer, BFA, MLS

An enrolled member of the Lummi Nation, Karl previously served as the Director of Diversity for the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Natural Resources Sciences. He worked extensively with tribal nations to protect wild rice and increase tribal influence over University research impacting Indian Country. A Certified Coach and Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Developmental Inventory, Karl is also a practicing visual artist, with previous grants and commissions from the Rockefeller Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Nadja Berneche, Director of Healthy Communities, BA, MPP, MSW

With nearly fifteen years’ experience in the field, Nadja is a content expert at the intersection of local food policy and community planning, providing technical assistance to local governments, nonprofits, and community members working to increase healthy food access. She uses local community planning as tool to strategically identify and implement initiatives to increase access to healthy food, physical activity, and health equity. She has served on the Saint Paul-Ramsey County Food and Nutrition Commission for eight years, serving as co-chair for the last four. She has also worked with coalitions and networks on changing policies to support urban agriculture, healthy eating, and food access at state and local levels.

Samantha Thomas, Operations Manager & Built Environment Lead, BA

Samantha has spent the last eight years on walkability and placemaking projects to achieve greater community well-being with 200 big cities, small towns, and tribal nations. She has broad community design background and manages numerous policy, planning and design projects focused on the built environment with national partners such as AARP and National Realtor Association; delivered technical assistance to the Citizen’s Institute on Rural Design, a program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and managed by Project for Public Spaces; provided safe routes to school technical assistance to the Cherokee Nation Community Health Program and all four counties of Hawaii.

Kristin Morris, Senior Associate Consultant in Adult Learning, BS, MS, EdD

Kristin is an award winning adult learning professional with extensive experience in learner assessment, curriculum and instructional design and delivery, project management, and 12 years in public and private sector learning environments for culturally diverse learners. She specializes in curriculum development and educational materials design; deployment of learner management systems and procedures; and project management, monitoring, and generation of progress reports. At the St. Paul Community Literacy Consortium, she identified learning opportunities for their culturally and linguistically diverse 11 non-profit member agencies. She also designed and facilitated culturally specific workshops and trainings focused on integrating into the American workforce, facilitating job skills workshops, and taught GED preparation classes, while managing creation, development, deployment, and evaluation of the learning solutions and systems.

Diane Benjamin, Senior Consultant for Framing & Messaging, BA, MPH

Diane has spent her career in the nonprofit world, focusing on data analysis, strategic communications, philanthropy, and policy change. She is currently the Communications Director for Child Care Aware of Minnesota, which helps children succeed by supporting the professional development of child care providers and by connecting families to high-quality child care. Previously, she was a Senior Associate with FrameWorks Institute, helping social change advocates communicate more effectively based on best practices identified in research.

Colin Cureton, Senior Associate Consultant for Quantitative & Qualitative Research, BA, MS, MPP

Colin provides clients with applied research expertise to guide strategic decision-making about food systems development. Previously, he led a farm-to-institution initiative in California, was a Research Fellow at the Cargill Foundation, directed a community-based urban agriculture project, and engaged extensively with many other food systems development efforts in the Upper Midwest. Colin currently works at the University of Minnesota, where he currently works with the UMN Forever Green Initiative to advance the commercialization of the next generation of sustainable crops for the Upper Midwest. He lives in Saint Paul, MN with his wife and two year-old son.

Partners

Terra Soma also enjoys ongoing collaborative partnerships with numerous firms and experts to deliver high quality services to clients, including DamonFarber; gish&co; LadywithaFan Design; and SCALE, Inc.