2026 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit

An ethnographer and folklorist, Leslie Soble has spent over seven years immersed in research on the carceral eating experience in the United States and its impacts on individuals, families, communities, and the environment. She is an internationally-recognized voice on the critical issue of prison food and is the author of Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison (The New Press, 2025).

From 2018 to 2026, Leslie led Impact Justice’s Food in Prison Project, where she oversaw programs and interventions to increase access to nourishing food for people impacted by incarceration, while also reducing food waste. Leslie is a founding board member of the Coalition for Carceral Nutrition and a member of the Invited Faculty at the Nova Institute for Health.