Jenn Gerard Lovewell, Real Good Fish

Jenn Gerard Lovewell holds a roosterfish she caught while sport fishing off the coast of Nayarit, Mexico.

Chief Nutrition Officer

There are many paths that bring folks to the ocean based-life of sustainable seafood. Some are born into fishing families. Others look to escape the nine-to-five rat race through the freedom of the open water. But for Jenn Gerard Lovewell, it was a focus on nutrition that brought her to the Monterey Bay seafood industry.

Lovewell, 36, is the chief nutrition officer for Real Good Fish, a Moss Landing-based community-supported fishery (CSF) that delivers locally-sourced seafood to customers throughout California. Real Good Fish also recently expanded their operation to the East Coast. 

Lovewell, a dietician by training, first partnered with Real Good Fish in 2014 when she was the director of nutrition for the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District, a demanding job she began at 26 years old. In that role, she oversaw the preparation and delivery of more than 10,000 meals a day to students on a budget of just $1.25 per meal. 

“It was probably the biggest challenge of my life,” she says. “When you’re that young, with strong ideals and values, you don’t know any better — I got into it wanting to make an impact on how food was sourced.”

But in meeting the kids and learning their needs, Lovewell saw that sourcing was only one part of the problem. The majority of the students were from low-income families who, in many cases, weren’t getting good nutrition outside of school. She would have to get creative and find innovative ways to provide healthy meals from sustainable sources on a tight budget.

Lovewell transformed cafeteria kitchens that were set up to reheat prepared foods to ones where breakfasts and lunches could be made from scratch. Lovewell also began looking for local foods to both provide students with greater nutrition and educate them about sustainable food systems.

“I had been looking all over for local seafood sources, especially being in Monterey and having that kind of celebrated fishing heritage and culture,” Lovewell says. “And yet I was having to serve students frozen fish sticks that were shaped like dolphins and stars.”

It was at this time that she met Alan Lovewell, the founder and chief executive officer of Real Good Fish. The two partnered to create the Bay2Tray program to bring fresh, local seafood into school cafeterias. Sourcing fish was just one aspect of the program. Kitchens had to be set up to handle raw fish and meat, and cafeteria workers had to be taught how to handle and prepare raw seafood. On top of that, Jenn Gerard Lovewell brought fishermen into classrooms to talk to students about their work on the water and stewardship of the environment.

“It was just a really wonderful way to start to introduce both culture and significance and also ocean conservation and awareness to these kids, and to feed them a much better, nutritious product,” she says.

With the success of the Bay2Tray program locally and other efforts at the school district, Lovewell took her skills statewide and became the program director of the California Food for California Kids initiative at the Berkeley-based Center for Ecoliteracy. In the new position, she pioneered professional development and training programs for cafeteria workers, training them on how to source local, healthy foods throughout the state.

The partnership between Jenn and Alan Lovewell blossomed, and, as you might expect from the last name, the two found love and married. The two now have a young son and a dozen chickens together.

In 2019, Jenn Gerard Lovewell decided to join her husband full-time at Real Good Fish. Since that time, she has expanded the Bay2Tray program to schools, universities, and food banks throughout California. She also ensures Real Good Fish customers receive the highest quality, most nutritious ingredients in prepared products like fresh fish burgers, smoked salmon ravioli, and other ready-to-eat products. Finally, much of her work involves educating the public about sustainability, fishermen, and the health benefits of local seafood.

“One of the things I love about working in seafood is that every day something is blowing my mind, just seeing the fish come in, learning about the different species, and just realizing the wonder that the ocean is,” Lovewell says. “To me, that makes it something I want people to know about, to love, and to bring into their lives.”