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ROC Fellows
Who are the Roots of Change Fellows?
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Fellows get to work in the CLBL farm house.
Chosen through an open application process, the ROC Fellows are a diverse group of CA food system leaders working together to develop strategies to create a sustainable food system for CA by 2030. Each class of ROC fellows is  selected to reflect a level of diversity and experience representative of the current CA food system. The fellows are chosen based on a wide variety of considerations including: their role in food system, leadership experience, project/business experience, connections to extended CA networks, and diversity of age, race, and geographic location to reflect the state’s overall diversity.
Read about the 2008 Fellowships here.

What will the Roots of Change Fellows do?

The Fellows are engaged in a nine-day facilitated strategic thinking process. In 2007, 27 leaders from all over California were chosen to work together to define and prioritize strategies for a twenty-five year campaign to move the State’s food system to a sustainable model by 2030. The nine-day process spans three intensive sessions held at the Farm on Putah Creek in Winters, CA, and are facilitated by Joseph McIntyre from Ag Innovations . The process is designed to allow participants to deepen their understanding of themselves, the other participants, and the entire food system in order to co-create a strategy that reflects the collective wisdom of the group. The sessions guide the Fellows to share their knowledge and experience of the system, view the system as a whole, think critically about how the various parts of the system interact, and identify effective points of system-wide change. This shared knowledge will help reach new levels of understanding of the current food system, which is essential to finding the most effective ways to create substantial change.
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Joseph McIntyre works with the Planning Fellows in the tent, where the fresh air helps to bring fresh ideas.

This year’s Fellowship Retreat dates are as follows:
    Session 1:  October 14-16, 2008
    Session 2:  November 19-20, 2008
    Session 3:  December 17-18, 2008

View Session Schedules from the 2007  Fellows Process:

What are the goals of the process?

The Vivid Picture Project outlined a vision, potential actions, and set of measurable indicators for a sustainable food system for CA in 2030. In order to achieve this vision, a large number of system actors must come to agreement on a clear set of initiatives that will be implemented. It is the job of the ROC  Fellows to uncover the most effective leaver points for creating system-wide change. The Fellows will develop a set of consensus recommendations for the Roots of Change that will be used for strategy and funding priorities for creating a “New Mainstream”.

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Fellows Eric Holt-Jimenez, Eric Cardenas, Chris Sayer, Holly King and Don Shaffer enjoy a post dinner recess as the sun sets.
The process will also help each  Fellow develop new networks, leadership skills, consensus and organizational learning techniques, and useful experience working with a variety of technological tools for on-line collaboration.
The goals of the 2008  process include:
1.    Continue to grow and ground the strategy for creating a sustainable food system by 2030.
2.    To form workgroups and give input to specific focus areas of the 5-year Campaign Strategy. 
3.    To expand the capacity of the Fellows to create and implement collaborative solutions for a sustainable food system.

 

Who are the 2007 Fellows?


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Fellows and ROC staff at 3rd session














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Brahm Ahmadi
Co-Founder and Executive Director of People’s Grocery and a leader noted for commitment to social justice, cooperative economics and access to healthy food for low-income, inner-city communities. Brahm is leading an effort to create a new retail format for West Oakland that will model a way to overcome the challenge of urban food deserts. Brahm is also active in organizing for economic democracy and was a founding board member of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives.
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Ladi Asgill
Born in Africa, Ladi is Project Manager for Sustainable Conservation . He has sustainable agriculture experience in the USA, Africa, and Asia. His expertise is helping farmers engage more environmentally responsible production practices. He currently has a particular emphasis on dairy farms and their ability to produce energy and eliminate pollution.
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Larry Bain
Entrepreneur and food procurement reformer, Larry has a long history of founding and managing excellent restaurants. Larry is co-owner of Let’s be Frank , which operates hot dog stands that feature all sustainable, grass-fed, all beef, hot dogs. He is also working with the Park Service to develop policies and systems for procuring sustainable foods produced on or near parklands.
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Jo Ann Baumgartner
Jo Ann is the Executive Director of the Wild Farm Alliance and a veteran teacher of farmers. Wild Farm Alliance helps producers to maximize species diversity on their lands while enhancing the farms’ economic performance. Jo Ann has farmed organically and worked with farmers on the central coast to protect water quality through use of best management practices.
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Natalia Bonilla
Natalia is an organizer and leader with Agriculture and Land Based Training Association (ALBA), which works on the Central Coast to move farmerworkers into positions as farm operators and/or owners.
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Hannah Burton-Laurison
Hannah is a policy analyst with the Public Health Law Program’s Land Use and Health project , where she specializes in community and economic development. Prior to joining PHLP, she staffed an $80 million public-private initiative that worked to develop new grocery stores in Pennsylvania’s low-income communities.
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Eric Cardenas
Eric is the Program Director for Environmental Defense Center ’s Central Coast Environmental Health Program and a long-time member of the Ventura AFA where he lead the effort to create a stewardship consensus document that now lies at the heart of the AFA’s work in Ventura.
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Mable Everette
Mable is a dietician with Community Nutrition Education Services . Along with a Ph.D. in public health, she has had a long career working with low-income communities in Los Angeles to improve eating and health through nutrition education. She is actively seeking alliances with food system advocates.
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Anya Fernald
Anya is Program Director with Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF). She works to improve economic options for family farms through the Buy Fresh, Buy Local Campaign, Farm-to-School, and the Growers Collaborative - a produce distribution company. She is a social entrepreneur with international experience steming from her years with Slow Food International. Anya has participated in the ROC Business Leaders Advisory Council.
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Vanessa Frank Garcia
Vanessa is a staff attorney with California Rural Legal Assitance in Ventura County and member of the AFA there. As an attorney out of Stanford, Vanessa is an emerging leader, representing farmworkers who are found at the beginning of the food distribution chain as harvesters, pickers and packers and at the end, as consumers who are highly impacted by limited availability of affordable nutritious and tasty food. 

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Joaquin Garza
Joaquin is a former farm and food processing worker that went into management with 25+ years in operations management experience with companies such as; Foster Farms, Ruiz Food Products and GAF Corporation. He has MBA and now directs the workforce development and education of incumbent workers for FIELD Farmworker Institute for Education and Leadership Development. He works with farm and processing plant owners and operators to develop better relations and systems for working with labor focusing on leadership development and High Performance Workforce Collaboration.
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Christi Heintz
Chris is a scientist and research director for the California Almond Industry . She has experience and success in working with a large agricultral industry as it moves into the age of biologically integrated farming systems.
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Eric Holt-Gimenez
Eric is the Executive Director and chief researcher at Food First , a people's think tank for food sovereignty.  He has a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies and has worked with farmer's movements in the U.S., Latin America, Africa and Asia for thirty years. His latest book "Campesino a Campesino" chronicles the achievements of the world's largest farmer-led movement for sustainable agriculture.
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Jonathan Kaplan
Jonathan is the Project Director of Natural Resources Defense Council ’s Sustainable Agriculture Initiative. He is project director of the California Roundtable on Agriculture and the Environment funded by ROC.
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Holly King
Holly is the Great Valley’s Center ’s Agriculture Program Director. She is a bridge builder between conventional farming and sustainable farming interests and has been instrumental in connecting ROC with stakeholders throughout the Central Valley.
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Jennifer Lester Moffitt
Jennifer is an organic walnut farmer from Winters, California. Although, only in her 20s, Jenny has taken over the management of her family's farming and walnut processing business, Dixon Ridge Farms which is the nation's largest handler of organic walnuts. Prior to returning home to the farm, she worked for American Farmland Trust on farmland protection efforts around the nation.
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Bu Nygrens
Bu is one of four owners of Veritable Vegetable , the oldest distributor of organic fresh fruits and vegetables in the US. Woman-owned and operated, serving local organic farms and independent retail businesses throughout California & the Southwest. VV promotes sustainable & organic agriculture, striving towards equitable sustainable food systems for all people. Veritable Vegetable is both a thriving business and an instrument for social, economic, and environmental change. Bu has helped guide the company in its growth since 1978, contributing to VV's reputation for integrity, advocacy and leadership. Bu participates in the ROC Business Leaders Advisory Council.
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Charlene Orszag
Charlene is a co-founder of Tierra Miguel Foundation - an organic farm, conservation, education and research center in San Diego County. Charlene is dedicated to energizing collaborative efforts to build ecologically sustainable food production and distribution systems. She was an early informant to the Vivid Picture research project.
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Sophia Pagoulatos
Sophia is a Supervising Planner for the City of Fresno . She is an advocate and leader in the effort to implement SMART Growth Policies in the Central Valley. She was a Peace Corp volunteer in Latin America.
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Maren Poitras
Maren is the Statewide Coordinator for the California Student Sustainability Coalition' s campaign sweeping California college campuses to transform the food-service system. In partnership with many campuses and surrounding communities the initiative is developing a model for local, organic, socially responsible, and humane food purchasing practices in conjunction with educational opportunities in the dining halls, student gardens, and curriculum development. The initiative is further collaborating to create the nationwide-wide movement deemed the "Real Food Challenge".

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Vance Russell
Vance is the Director of the Landowner Stewardship Program for Audubon California . He has been an instrumental player in the Yolo AFA and is a constructive critic, working with agriculture, not against it, to make producers more environmentally responsible.

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Jenny Saklar
Jenny is the Assistant Director of Environment Health for Fresno Metro Ministry . Her work is instrumental in helping this multi faith-based organization’s efforts to protect all San Joaquin Valley breathers from air pollution.  Her clean air advocacy involves many aspects of the food system including: farming, land use, transportation, production, and pesticide exposure.
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Chris Sayer
Chris is an avocado and citrus grower from Santa Paula. He also spent some time as a P3 Orion Pilot for the US Airforce. He has been engaged with the Ventura AFA and the UC Hansen Trust on issues facing agriculture and the community.

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Shayam Shabaka
Shayam is an educator and advocate working with low-income students from the Richmond area. His EcoVillage Farm Learning Center features an urban farm where food production and ecological principles are taught. Shayam has a Masters in Public Health and he has worked overseas and throughout the nation on sustainable food-system issues. He was a farm laborer as a child, picking cotton in the south.

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Don Shaffer
Don is president and CEO of RFS Social Finance and former executive Director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). He is also an entrepreneur with experience raising millions in capital to finance triple-bottom-line companies. Don co-founded the San Benito AFA and is a part owner of Comet Skateboards, a designer and manufacturer of premium skateboarding products committed to local and sustainable business practices.

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Casey Walsh Cady
Casey is a senior staff member for A.G. Kawamura, the Secretary of Food and Agriculture for the State of California . She has been instrumental in developing CDFA policy related to biological farming systems and in helping ROC develop meaningful links with that department.
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George Work
George is a rancher and innovator living on the Work Ranch on the Central Coast in Monterey County. He is the leader in the field of holistic range management in California, having mentored many producers. He is a pioneer in species stewardship and has been instrumental in returning California Elk to the Central Coast mountain range. He and his wife led the statewide effort to pass AB1258 in 1999, which allows farmers and ranchers to develop home-stay facilities on agricultural properties.
 
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