Trevor Jonas Benson

progressive project manager, and enthusiastic enterpriser. Since 2006, he has supported the development of local sustainable food systems in Canada and abroad. Trevor is passionate about collaborating with others to create meaningful change in the way that people experience food, and he enjoys nothing more than working with the communities that make it taste so great.

As Vice President, Destination Development at the Culinary Tourism Alliance, Trevor oversees all aspects of the organization’s social enterprise consultancy. He manages highly participatory and asset-based food tourism development projects at the local, regional, provincial, and national levels.

Trevor has a background in Law and Human Rights as well as Sustainable Local Food. He regularly speaks on developing food and agritourism in an inclusive and impactful way, with recent notable engagements including the Tourism Industry Association of Canada’s Tourism Congress in Ottawa, ON (Nov 2018), the Pacific Asia Travel Association’s Adventure Travel & Responsible Tourism Conference in Rishikesh, India (Feb 2019), the 5th International Conference of the Food Observatory and the Alicia Foundation on Food Heritage, Tourism and Sustainability, in Barcelona, Spain (Jun 2019), and the International Indigenous Tourism Conference in Kelowna, BC (Nov 2019).

Trevor developed curriculum for North America’s first postgraduate certificate in Food Tourism studies at Centennial College, where he teaches two courses: Tourism Destinations and Global Tourism Development & Social Justice. He also wrote a chapter on Intellectual Property Rights in Gastronomic Tourism for the Routledge Handbook of Gastronomic Tourism, and contributed to the latest SKIFT Research report The New Era of Food Tourism: Trends and Best Practices for Stakeholders, both of which were published in Feb 2019.

Back to all speakers