Most school nutrition programs never see the people behind their social feeds. This episode of Next Up turns the camera around. Marlon Gordon sits down with Rachel Dreslinski and Kariss Harvey, the two social media managers at NxtGen Network, to talk about how they plan content for districts and manufacturers, which AI tools they actually use every day, and why the most convincing voice for school meals doesn't belong to any of them.

Meet the Street Team

Rachel has been with NxtGen for a little over two years. Her working interview happened at ANC in Boston, where she got one of Marlon's early tests: walk up to Angela, NxtGen's chief of staff, and tell her you could beat her at volleyball. Rachel played college volleyball on a nationally ranked team, so she did it without hesitating. Kariss joined almost a year ago. Her first trip was a four-episode shoot with Action for Healthy Kids at the Middleby Innovation Kitchen, and it taught her to ask about the travel plan, because she left her luggage at a hotel the crew wasn't going back to.

Their backgrounds are different in useful ways. Rachel studied business administration with a marketing concentration. Kariss earned a communications degree at Florida State and a master's in social and emerging media at the University of Tampa. Between them they manage social for Red Gold, DC Public Schools, Columbia Heights, Hillsborough County, Pasco County, Florida SNA, and NxtGen's own channels. Rachel has also moved into client relations, because it turns out she's the rare person who actually likes meetings.

How the Team Actually Uses AI

Nobody on this team uses AI to write original content from scratch. They use it to clean up and speed up. Rachel uses Claude for the deep-thinking work, like breaking down a campaign idea, and she's set it up to read ClickUp and send her a Slack message each morning listing what's due. She uses Nano Banana and Veo in Gemini for images and video. She also built a client simulator trained on meeting notes and feedback, so the team can see how each person on a client's team is likely to react to a post idea before it's ever pitched.

Kariss built a brand voice skill from years of her own NxtGen copy. Give it the details of an event and it drafts the post in the voice she'd use anyway. The team also has a skill called humanize that checks whether copy reads as machine-written and revises it so it doesn't.

"AI gets you like maybe what 65% of the way there and then you have to add the human element. With this new skill that we have, it probably gets us like 85, 90% there."

Rachel's advice is to never accept the first answer. AI can write a cleaner caption, but it doesn't know your audience or why the post exists until you tell it, and you'll often have to push back. Marlon's version: AI won't replace people, but people who use AI will replace people who don't. He cited a proposal that took Claude five minutes and would have taken the team five hours, and a training portal he built for Seattle Public Schools' video team in a single afternoon.

Student Ambassadors Carry the Message

The biggest idea in the episode isn't about software. Marlon admits it took him a while to fully see it: adults can defend school meals all day, and it won't land the way it does when a student says it. NxtGen has spent the last year and a half working with Miami-Dade's student ambassadors. Those students were picked because they were lukewarm on school meals, not because they already loved them, and they now show up in the comments to push back on critics themselves.

"The three of us can talk till we're blue in the face. Everybody out there can talk till they're all blue in the face about how important school meals are. But people aren't going to listen to us like they would listen to students."

NxtGen took what it learned in Miami and built a playbook other districts can use to start their own ambassador programs, including student and staff training, monthly meetings, and taste tests for manufacturers. Local dairy alliances are funding many of those launches. The students get something they asked for directly, which is real experience to put on college applications.

Immersion, NxtGen Pro, and the Hardest Client

Marlon also previewed Immersion, a one-day event NxtGen is co-hosting with Cool School Cafe in Tampa on Saturday, January 9, the day before SNIC. The learning sessions will be held at Hillsborough County Public Schools' district office, with four tracks covering menu marketing and branding, AI in school nutrition, a kitchen immersion lab, and a custom sponsor track. The day ends with a closing event inside the main exhibit at the Florida Aquarium.

He also talked about NxtGen Pro, the new company that helps manufacturers develop, test, and market K-12 products with student ambassadors and about 25 advisors around the country before they commit to full production. As for the team's hardest client, Kariss didn't need long to answer. It's NxtGen itself, because the ideas keep coming faster than the content calendar can absorb them.

Advice for Programs Just Starting on Social

Both managers told school nutrition teams the same thing: start posting and stop worrying about follower counts. A page with 100 followers can still reach 100 families you feed every day, and reels can reach people well beyond your followers. Rachel pointed to DC Public Schools' monthly Try It Tuesday as a good model. The photos don't have to be perfect, but the moment is real.

"People want people connection. People want to connect with others. And people want to see real stuff."

Key Takeaways