Co-Founder
Robert Riley
Robert was a kid who liked vegetables. He grew up with a family garden that helped provide tomatoes for the whole neighborhood and a family business that taught him to value all things local. Through Boy Scouts, he developed a deep appreciation for nature and learned to leave it better than he found it.
Robert graduated from Washburn University with a degree in art, business, and mass media and spent the first part of his career producing events that taught others to live sustainably. He loves lending a hand and organizing complex ideas into workable, simplified systems, recognizing that most of the solutions for healing our planet reside in the wisdom of past generations who lived in greater harmony with the natural world. Robert loves watching birds and dreams of one day being able to properly identify them through sight and song.
Co-Founder
Justine Greve
Justine had a lead speaking role in her fifth-grade musical on environmentalism and never got the message that she could stop playing the part. She started a paper recycling program at Shawnee Heights High School and was president of the environmental club at Baker University, where her senior thesis on plastic bag reduction won a school-wide award. For the next decade, she worked as an editor, writer, and researcher—ultimately landing a dream job at the Family Court in Kansas City. But when it came to sustainability, she felt like she was spinning her wheels—working to live as sustainably as possible in her own life but unsure of how to contribute to broader systemic change.
The rubber finally met the road in 2019 when Justine met Robert. The basic idea for Full Circle formed within their first conversation, and they have been working together to make sustainable living easier ever since. If she’s not working or spending time with loved ones, Justine is cooking, eating, biking—or looking for something to sort, plan, or organize.
Board Member, Vice President
Zach Foley
Zach has a Bachelor of History degree from Kansas State University and a passion for looking to the past at systems that failed and using that knowledge to make more sustainable changes for the future. With nearly a decade of marketing experience, he is focused on spreading the Full Circle message through all channels and platforms.
Board Member, Secretary
LaVerta Greve
As a farm kid and child of Depression-era parents, LaVerta grew up reducing, reusing, and recycling—and eating lots of “local” produce from her family’s large garden. After attending Emporia State and the University of Kansas, she spent her career working for the state in social-service and health-related agencies, taking a break in the middle to raise her two children.
Now retired, you’ll find her outdoors on every nice day, maintaining five compost bins and three rain barrels to support her landscaping habit. She is active in her church, serves on the Board of the I-Care Food Pantry, tutors through the Topeka Literacy Council, and enjoys traveling with her husband whenever possible.
Board Member
Melinda Williamson
Melinda is a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation and the founder of Morning Light Kombucha, currently the only Native American and woman-owned kombucha brewery in the U.S. In 2010, Melinda was a Senior Research Specialist at Oklahoma State University, when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. This diagnosis led her to use food, including kombucha, as a way of healing her body. Two years later, she left academia to raise her daughter closer to home, and in 2016, she launched Morning Light Kombucha with a purpose: to bring healing to the people in her community, to spark conversations about where our food comes from and action surrounding sustainability, and to bring awareness to issues affecting indigenous people today.
Melinda is a James Beard Foundation Open for Good Grant recipient and utilizes close partnerships with local farmers focused on regenerative agricultural practices to source her ingredients. She and her family also harvest wild fruit, vegetables, and herbs to add to her kombucha tea.