A business administrator and educator with over 25 years of experience in the health, business, and education field, Mary James serves as Executive Director for the Center. During her professional career, Mary has held the positions of Director of Volunteer Services for a local Phoenix hospital, Director of Administrative Services for DeVry University, and Program Development Manager for a local Head Start program. Mary brings to her role at the Center a diverse background in management and organization development, including extensive classroom experience working with both adults and youth.
Volunteering since age fifteen where he worked at the Hamburg State Hospital in Pennsylvania, Michael McCaffrey has always had an interest in working in the non-profit field. He was the Media Relations Director for an Arizona non-profit committed to promoting economic self-sufficiency for low-income people and later became a Congressional Aide for Congresswoman Karan English. Michael and his wife Dee McCaffrey co-founded The Center for Processed-Free Living, an organization dedicated to eliminating obesity through nutrition education to young and old.
Michael also co-founded Health from the Heart Enterprises, an organization noted for its exceptionally healthy and tasty innovations such as Dee’s Mighty Muffin (www.mightymuffins.com) and Dee’s Healthy Gourmet (www.deeshealthygourmet.com). Today Michael is the Director of Programs for the Center, working to grow the number of children reached by the Center’s nutrition classes and other programs.
Being overweight as a child, Dee McCaffrey knows all too well the experience of growing up overweight. She also knows the difficulty in reversing the trend once you are overweight at a younger age. At 210 pounds and 4’10”, Dee eliminated processed foods from her diet and as a result lost half her body weight, going from 210 pounds to 110 pounds in one year. She made it a lifestyle change and has maintained a 100-pound weight loss for over 15 years.
Dee and her husband Michael later founded the Center for Processed-Free Living, an organization dedicated to eliminating obesity through nutrition education to young and old. Dee holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Chemistry from San Jose State University, practiced organic chemistry for more than 16 years, is a Certified Diet Counselor trained at Bauman College in Penngrove, CA and is a member of the American Association of Nutrition Professionals.
Proceeds from Dee’s book Dee's Mighty Cookbook: Tasty Cuisine for Flourless and Sugarless Living, her DVD and all adult educational programs goes to the Center, contributing to cover overhead, material expenses and stipends for Food Educators.
Doctor Orlowski is a practicing Naturopathic Doctor in Arizona. She practiced at the A.R.E. medical clinic and the Southwest Clinic of Naturopathic Medicine and has taught classes in Nutrition, Environmental medicine, and Naturopathic medicine at numerous institutions including the Phoenix Institute of Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture, the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine and The Southwest Institute of Healing Arts.