Ethos Farm to Health Staff

The people who work at Ethos are connected by a shared belief - that food, and the way food is grown is central to determining human health and the health of everything around us. This belief inspires each workday and is the basis for our common endeavor of Tikkun Olam - repairing the world.

Nick Hodgson, Field Manager

Nick’s passions for environmental and human health led him to an interest in food production.  He began exploring agriculture in 2015 working on a local organic family farm.  He started to see the connection that regenerative agriculture had with environmental and human health.  He has since worked on three non-profit farms, including a farm to hospital project. 

This is where Nick really started to see food as medicine. Last season he managed a for-profit market garden in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. These experiences led him to the Ethos Farm to Health.  He is driven by this passion to heal the land and ourselves and continually strives to learn and grow as a farmer and a human.

Pragya Thakur, Marketing and Communications Specialist

Pragya is a financial management and digital marketing professional with 25 years of experience in consumer marketing in the periodicals industry. She was a double major in Finance and Marketing and has an MBA from New York University's Stern School of Business.

As a strategic planning, finance, and marketing executive in companies like Time-Warner, Disney Publishing, Hallmark Publishing, and Bonnier Corporation, she has designed, implemented, and improved budgeting, forecasting, and P&L management systems.  

Since the late 1990s, Pragya has been progressively involved in the designing, financial planning and execution of digital marketing campaigns while focusing on Key Performance Indicators.

She has also volunteered her time and skills to non-profit organizations such as Matheny Medical and Educational Center, IES Brain Research, New Jersey Conservation Foundation, NJ Audubon, and most recently Ethos Farm Project.

Pragya's interest in whole plant-based food and regenerative agriculture and the interconnectedness of the two grew when her health seemingly miraculously improved in the care of Dr. Weiss, and she was convinced beyond doubt that plants are medicine.

Saul Bautista, M.D., MPH, Director of Medical Education & Community Engagement

Dr Saul Bautista returns to Ethos where his education began. In 2015, collaborating with mentors Dr. Saray Stancic and Dr. Ronald Weiss he pioneered the introduction of Lifestyle Medicine within medical education in New Jersey founding the NJMS Lifestyle Medicine Group where he oversaw the creation and implementation of various institutional and community lifestyle medicine initiatives.

He was featured in the documentary film “Code Blue: Redefining The Practice Of Medicine” which presents the clinical practice of Lifestyle Medicine as a solution to the chronic illness epidemic. For his efforts he was nationally recognized with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) Donald A. Pegg Student Leadership Award in 2018 and one of 60 military veterans selected nationwide as a Tillman Scholar in 2019.

He is a graduate of Rutgers-Newark, Rutgers School of Public Health, Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and has a total of 3 years post-graduate clinical training in Internal Medicine/Pediatrics and Family Medicine. His expertise and future directions lie in Preventive Medicine and the emergent field of Lifestyle Medicine.