Partners and Staff

The Vivid Picture Project is supported by a growing group of food and agriculture leaders, strategists, analysts, commentators and funders. Committed to building a vision of a sustainable future and determined to find the roots of change, these friends and colleagues are pooling their collective resources on this project.

The Roots of Change Council
The Roots of Change Fund
Sustainable Food Business Group
Work Force Workgroup
Change Agenda Staff Team
Ecotrust
Vivid Picture Staff and Partners

The Roots of Change Council

The ROC Council is a group of advisors from a variety of backgrounds that serve as a high-level advisory body for the Roots of Change Fund. Each member has extensive expertise in one or more of the specific food systems fields. Collectively, the members represent the many different pieces that constitute California's sustainable food systems. This group currently includes the following:

David Brubaker Animal agriculture consultant and writer. Formerly, director of the GRACE/Henry Spira Factory Farm Project, Center for a Livable Future

Jim Cochran Founder, Swanton Berry Farm; Working with UCSC his innovations have resulted in over fifty other farms producing organic strawberries.

Leonard Diggs Farmer and educator, Leonard Diggs Farms and Shone Farm/ Santa Rosa Junior College

Paul Dolan President, Fetzer Vineyards; Board of Directors, Wine Institute, Businesses for Social Responsibility

Ann Evans Nutrition Education Consultant, California Department of Education; former Mayor of Davis, California

Stephen Gliessman Alfred E. Heller Professor of Agroecology, University of California Santa Cruz

Joan Gussow Author and Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emeritus of Nutrition and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University

Martha Guzmán Legislative Advocate for the California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation, United Farm Workers of America, technical manager for the Farm Worker Safe Drinking Water Project, California Water Commission, member of the California Agricultural Leadership Program.

Desmond Jolly Director, Small Farm Center, University of California

Jose Montenegro Founder and Executive Director, Center for International Sustainable Development (CIDERS). Formerly, Executive Director, Rural Development Center

Nell Newman President, Newman's Own Organics, worked briefly at the Environmental Defense Fund in New York. Executive Director of the Ventana Wilderness Sanctuary, fundraiser for the Santa Cruz Predatory Bird Research Group.

Pietro Parravano Commercial fisherman and owner/operator of the commercial fishing vessel Anne B. President of the Institute for Fisheries Resources, Commissioner of the San Mateo County Harbor District, Pew Oceans Commission. One of two U.S. delegates to the World Forum of Fish Workers and Fish Harvesters.

Richard Rominger Advisor, University of California and California State University agriculture programs; formerly, Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Agriculture, formerly, Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture

Larry Yee Director, UC Cooperative Extension-Ventura County; Advisor, the Hansen Trust

More information on the ROC Council can be found at: www.rocfund.org.

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The Roots of Change Fund

The Roots of Change (ROC) Fund is a foundation collaborative that supports work to catalyze the transition to a healthier food system and a healthier environment. Over the past two years, a group of funders have developed this initiative through ongoing discussions with key California food system experts. The funders currently include:

Arkay Foundation

Columbia Foundation

Gaia Fund

Fred Gellert Family Foundation

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund

Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation

W.K. Kellogg Foundation

Marisla Foundation

William Zimmerman Foundation

More information on the ROC Fund can be found at: www.rocfund.org. The ROC Fund is a project of the Trust for Conservation Innovation (TCI) in San Francisco (www.trustforconservationinnovation.org).

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Sustainable Food Business Group

The ROC Fund has begun gathering sustainable food business leaders to discuss alternative business models for creating sustainable food systems. They are among several different stakeholder groups providing input into the Vivid Picture and Change Agenda. Engaging the business community is an important step since they will be one of the primary players in implementing the proposed solutions and business models that emerge from the Vivid Picture project. This group currently includes the following:

Larry Bain Restaurant, COO, Jardiniere

Dan Benedetti Wholesaler/Distributor, President of Clover Stornetta Farm

Michael Besancon Retailer, President of Southern Region, Whole Foods

Jim Cochran Producer, Founder of Swanton Berry Farm, member of planning team

Jesse Cool Restaurant, Founder of CoolEatz, member of planning team

Paul Cultrera Retailer, General Manager of Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op

Paul Dolan Producer/Processor, Former President of Fetzer Vineyards, member of planning team

Michael Funk Distributor, Founder of United Natural Foods, member of planning team

Winston Hickoxx Finance/Govt, CalPERs

Lizz Hund Finance, RaboBank

Larry Jacobs Producer, CEO of Jacobs Farm/Del Cabo Inc.

Bu Nygrens Distributor, Purchasing Manager of Veritable Vegetables

Walter Robb Retailer, Co-President, Whole Foods

Robin Robinson Processor, VP Marketing, Nspired Natural Foods (formerly with Quaker Oats)

Greg Steltenpohl Processor, Founder of Odwalla, member of planning team

Woody Tasch Chairman, Investors' Circle

Craig Weakley Processor, Small Planet Foods, VP of agriculture

David Weed Retailer, Former Safeway, Niman Ranch Bd member

Marc Zammit Food Service, Director of Culinary Support and Development, Bon Appetit

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Work Force Workgroup

The Work Force Workgroup was formed to convene a group of expert labor leaders to envision what a sustainable agricultural labor force in California would look like. This information will feed into the Vivid Picture and may lead to additional labor-focused initiatives within the ROC Fund. The Workgroup currently includes:

David Brubaker Animal agriculture consultant and ROC Council member

Susan Clark Columbia Foundation and ROC Funder Co-chair

Jim Cochran Swanton Berry Farm and ROC Council member

Mario Gutierrez California Endowment

Martha Guzman California Rural Legal Assistance Foundation and ROC Council member

Kirke Wilson Formerly, Rosenberg Foundation

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Change Agenda Staff Team

Jill Kauffman Johnson

Jonathan Kaplan

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Ecotrust

Ecotrust is a non-profit organization with a mission to build the bioregion called Salmon Nation, from Alaska to California -- a place defined by watersheds, not political boundaries and valued for abundance, interconnectedness, authenticity, and sense of place- with an understanding that extraordinary economies that support the social fabric of a region can be built within an ecological framework. Based in Portland, Oregon, Ecotrust also has offices in San Francisco, California, Coos Bay, Oregon, Anchorage, Cordova, and Juneau Alaska. Ecotrust has five focus areas: Forestry, Fisheries, Food and Farms, Native Communities and Citizenship. The Food and Farms program of Ecotrust will be managing the Vivid Picture Project.

More information on Ecotrust can be found at: www.ecotrust.org.

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Vivid Picture Staff and Partners

Project Manager:

Eileen Brady, Vice-President of Food & Farms, has twenty years of experience in the natural foods retail grocery business, developing sustainable agriculture based marketing and operations programs for several Northwest natural food retailers. She sits on the Governor's Steering Committee for Oregon Solutions, the statewide effort to develop sustainable solutions to economic issues, and is a board member of Zenger Farm, the first urban agricultural park in the nation. In addition she is the co-founder and Advisory Chair for Community Food Matters, a region-wide food network of policy and business activists and speaks regularly on "Building Regional Food Economies."

Eileen is responsible for project management and providing direction for the Vivid Picture Project. She oversees the timeline, workplan, inquiry and data development processes, final product development and communications to all involved parties.

Chief Economist:

Dr. Astrid Scholz, Ecological Economist, conceptualizes and analyzes the linkages between ecological, economic and social systems in the emerging conservation economy. She is currently engaged in three Ecotrust sectoral programs that aim to develop blueprints and tools for transitioning current natural resource usage to more sustainable paths. In the Ecotrust Forestry Program, she is working on an integrated visioning tool for imagining alternative silviculture regimes in the year 2050; and in the Fisheries Program, she is leading a set of projects that expand the applications of the OCEAN suite of tools, the first regional, spatially explicit, analytical framework for assessing the socioeconomic impacts of fishery management measures on coastal communities in the bioregion. In FY2004, projects include community applications and socioeconomic analyses of marine management issues in central California; four communities in Northern California, Southern Oregon, and coastal Washington; several community partners in British Columbia; and collaborative processes in the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska.

Astrid provides direction and consultation on socio-economic tool development for the Vivid Picture process. Outlining data and query structures for obtaining the answers to key questions and objectives of the project will be Astrid's key contribution. She will also provide day to day supervision of the economist hired to work directly on the project. Astrid will provide peer review and final analysis at critical stages of the SEED tool.

GIS Modeller:

Mike Mertens, Senior GIS Analyst, has worked for Ecotrust for more than five years in advanced ArcInfo GIS on watershed analysis, habitat mapping, image processing, socio-economic modelling and related topics. Mike has extensive experience in ARC/INFO, ArcView, ERDAS Imagine, Internet Map Servers, MapObjects and other GIS and image-processing software and software development tools He manages the Ecotrust Mapdesk, serving mapping needs of multiple clients. He also has software development experience and has designed custom mapping applications for release with GIS data CD-ROM's. Mike has a B.S. in Natural Resource Planning and worked with both the City of Wilsonville and the City of Arcata planning departments before coming to Ecotrust.

Mike is the main driver in developing the models and query structures for the Vivid Picture SEED information tools. He will develop assumptions, statistical standards and relevancy testing criteria. Mike is responsible for designing these inferences and determining significance of data relationships. He also works with our partner, the University of San Diego, to run complex processes on their super-computer.

GIS Analyst:

Analisa Gunnell, Chief Cartographer, graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelor of Science in Geography. Before coming to Ecotrust, she was contracted by the Bureau of Land Management to help them develop a complete data set for all Hydrology resources found on BLM land. Her work at Ecotrust has included: creation of maps focusing on ownership, tree density and size, as well as data discrepancy between agencies for specified salmon anchor habitats within Oregon and Washington, data creation, compilation, and management as well as all maps for the Corvallis Natural Features Inventory, GIS analysis, data compilation, and map composition for the Sandy Basin Habitat Conservation Plan, data compilation, and aid in the development of an iterative tool for selecting the key watersheds to anchor the regional salmon recovery efforts in Western Oregon and Washington.

Analisa is responsible for inputting data into the designed data formats and creating, running, testing and retesting all developed models and queries. She will produce all visual, spatial reports and maps. She will be responsible for making the tool accessible and useable for others outside the organization.

Data Manager:

Debra Sohm, Director of Food & Farms Market Connections, develops and manages several databases for Ecotrust. Her most recent projects include: serving as data manager for the Groundfish Fleet Reduction project at Ecotrust. While at Ecotrust, she has identified, analyzed, and mapped conservation investments and organizational capacity within the Coastal Temperate Rainforest Region, created an original map for the book Salmon Nation, and conducted market research on organic products and agriculture. Prior to working at Ecotrust, she spent four years at Conservation International, where she served as the research assistant in the Science Department investigating and mapping global biodiversity, and later became the Ghana Program Assistant. As a Fulbright Fellow in Ghana, Debra worked with the staff at a National Park on visitor-use issues.

Debra works very closely with the staff economist and serves as the data coordinator for the Vivid Picture project. She is designing the data table structure for the project, seeking out necessary datasets, and serves as the contact for all incoming data. We are fortunate to have a data developer on this project that is well versed in agriculture and food issues. In addition Debra will maintain the project updates for all who will be following the progress of the Vivid Picture process on line.

Database Programmer:

Greg Robillard serves as the Database Developer for the Pacific Rim State of the Salmon project, a joint project of Ecotrust and the Wild Salmon Center. Greg is a graduate of Cornell University, where he majored in Rural Sociology and developed his GIS skills. He worked as a GIS Analyst for the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security, in Oakland, California, and later as a web programmer at the Fund for the City of New York, where he was developing Spanish/English programs to promote social justice.

Greg serves as the chief database designer for the project. Greg provides top level server and table management as well as developer of the database performance tuning and management systems for the Vivid Picture database.

Sustainable Business Analyst:

Steven McGrath, Sustainable Business Analyst, recently completed an MBA in finance at Portland State University. A native of the San Francisco bay area, he graduated from U.C. Berkeley with a major in statistics. Steve's background includes aerospace Research and Development and financial analysis for Lockheed's Palo Alto Research Lab, and extensive experience with software development in Silicon Valley.

Steve is developing sustainable value web scenarios for the Vivid Picture project, as well as contributing to the development of sustainable food system indicators and the refinement of the visioning tool.

Researcher:

Carolina Jaramillo is an economist, native of Colombia, South America, with a M.S. in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from University of Los Andes (in partnership with the University of Maryland). Carolina worked in the Ministry of the Environment in Colombia in the planning, implementation and monitoring of policies aimed at the creation of new, and the promotion of existing, micro- and small eco-enterprises. Main projects included: opening market access and commercialization channels for environmentally preferable businesses; establishment of an organic certification incentive program for rural co-ops and small farmers; development of new partnerships and alliances between public and private entities to enhance green niche markets; and the design of an eco-label program for Colombia's environmental products.

Carolina has served the Vivid Picture Project by identifying, collecting, and interpreting data for the project's set of indicators. She supports the research and data collection requirements for the socio-economic and ecological decision (SEED) model development.

Communications Manager:

Howard Silverman, Communications Manager, has written and coordinated the development of Ecotrust materials in a wide variety of media. His focus is to distill the integral messages of Ecotrust programmatic activities for presentation to the public at large. He works to coherently tie Ecotrust work with our larger mission to build Salmon Nation. As the person at the helm of Ecotrust's popular SectionZ newspaper inserts, Howard has achieved great success in reaching a mass audience with key sustainability messages, presented in a simple and concise format. He comes to Ecotrust with a diverse background as an English teacher, web designer, and translator of Mandarin Chinese.

Howard provides oversight of the final communication documents that will be provided to the Roots of Change Council and Funders. Howard will work to distill the key information into digestible, actionable elements. Howard will be an editor of the final materials submitted as the project's end.

Communications Designer:

Melissa Tatge, Creative Director, has nine years of professional experience as a graphic designer, covering projects such as advertising and marketing collateral, corporate identity, illustration, presentation design, and web and interface design. She has put her design skills to work for several advertising and graphic design agencies in New York City and Savannah, Georgia, as well as independently developing web sites, and marketing and identity solutions for small companies. Melissa has a foundation in Liberal Arts, receiving a BA in Politics from New York University. She studied Graphic Design at Parson's School of Design and the School of Visual Arts, Product Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and Web Design at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Her portfolio may be viewed at www.melissatatge.com.

Melissa designed this web site, and will provide design oversight for all final materials that will be created including any written document, publication or PowerPoint materials.

Final Deliverable Coordinator

Lola Milholland recently completed her sophomore year at Amherst College in MA, where she will major in Asian Languages and Civilizations. An Oregon native, she studied Japanese language in Portland public schools since kindergarten. She will leave this coming September for Kyoto, Japan, where she will spend a year studing Japanese language and literature at Doshisha University. Lola grew up in the natural foods community of Portland. Her mother, Theresa Marquez, is currently the marketing director for Organic Valley, the largest organic cooperative in North America. Last summer, Lola received a Carnegie Mellon grant for her work with professor Rick Lopez crafting his class on the environmental history of Latin America. This summer she was awarded an Amherst College fellowship to work on the Vivid Picture Project.

Lola is coordinating the creation of the final narrative to be delivered to the ROC council on October 1. In that role she is keeping the writing staff on task and acting as first-line editor. She also has become a warehouse and catologuer for the project's many documents. Seperately she will be writing a paper on successful cooperative business models for reference in the final narrative.

Project Assistant:

Andrea Hildebrand is a 2002 graduate of Marylhurst University with a BA in Environmental Science. Andrea has assisted the Food and Farms Program since 2002 and is currently working with ArcView GIS to help create maps for Ecotrust's Salmon Nation project.

Andrea will be collecting data from many diverse sources and assisting the project staff with individual requests.

Administrative Coordinator:

Candace McCarty recently finished her freshman year at Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois, where she is currently majoring in Business Management. As a Presidential Scholar of Millikin, Candace has been active throughout the campus community as a member of Alpha Lambda Delta, an honor fraternity, as well as the school's swim team, and has participated in numerous fundraising and scholarship opportunities. As a leader and representative on campus, Candace has also played a large role in student awareness, during the Presidential election of the past year. Participating in the creation and heart of a campus campaign to promote voter turnout for college age students, "Speak Up or Shut Up," held viewing opportunities of the Presidential debates, and gave the campus community a place to voice their comments.

Candace is providing general administrative support for the Vivid Picture Project this summer, under the direction of Eileen Brady. Besides organizational tasks, she will also be involved in managing the VP budget, updating contracts, as well as coordinating all the documents that will be apart of the final deliverable for the project.

Consultants:

Ken Meter, president of Crossroads Resource Center, holds 33 years of experience in community capacity building as an administrator, researcher, journalist and educator. Mr. Meter teaches the economics of agriculture at the University of Minnesota, and has taught economics at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he also received a Masters in Public Administration. His work will include the development of new economic data and information that can given context to a Vivid Picture and input into the GIS database-driven scenario-building tool. He will also identify useful measures of the strength of community-based food economies in California, including, where possible, specific constraints on the local system, practical targets for achievement.

Dr. Tom Gillpatrick, PhD and David Lakey, MBA from The Lake Group have joined the Vivid Picture team to evaluate the current economic model's strengths and weaknesses. Dr. Gillpatrick is the Juan Young Professor of food marketing and the executive director of the Food Industry Leadership Center at Portland State University. Mr. Lakey is president of The Lake Group and works with senior executives and company leaders on growth strategy, organizational capability, marketing and brand development. Their work has included the evaluation of economic assumptions used in the existing scenario-building tools as well as helping to develop some Vivid Picture scenarios. They have worked on the economic formulas used in the existing scenario-building tool, as well as provided input on the datasets required for the tool.

Indicators Development Specialist:

Gail Feenstra, Ed.D., is the Food Systems Analyst at the University of California's Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program. Since 1991 she has coordinated SAREP's Community Development and Public Policy Program which includes conducting applied and evaluative research that strengthens community food systems. She coordinates education and outreach to community-based groups to build their capacity and leadership skills. Gail is also a nutritionist with a background in nutrition education. Gail has developed a template for measuring food system indicators in three California county foodsheds. Case studies can be viewed at http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/cdpp/foodsystems/countystudies.htm.

Gail is developing, and refining food systems indicators for the Vivid Picture project. System indicators will help to measure baseline information and chart progress towards a sustainable food system for California.

Food Industry Input Coordinator:

Lily Thompson, a writer by inclination and by trade, she splits her time between Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area. Having grown up in the Natural Foods Industry under the pioneering tutelage of her father, second-generation chairman of Thompson Vitamins, Lily found it natural to enter the industry after completing her degree in English and History. She first cut her marketing teeth at Muir Glen and was part of the team that transitioned the small company into General Mills's ownership. From there she honed her marketing chops at Barbara's Bakery and then went on to become the Brand Message Manager at White Wave for Silk Soymilk and the company's other lines of soy products.

After experiencing another transition to large company ownership, Lily decided to go into business for herself as a marketing strategist and copywriter. Since then she has prepared communication and brand development strategies as well as performed various other marketing functions for such companies as Traditional Medicinals and Spectrum Organic Products, Inc.

Local Producers Input Advisor:

Founded in 1978, the Community Alliance with Family Farmers is a non-profit member-activist organization. CAFF's political and eduational campaigns are building a movement of rural and urban people who foster family-scale agriculture that cares for the land, sustains local economies and promotes social justice. Members are urbanites, farmers, environmentalists, rural activists, students and anyone concerned with the social and environmental dimensions of agriculture.

CAFF will provide data and insight into the project from the point of view of the local producers. CAFF, in addition to general input to the project, will survey it's membership (and potential membership), helping to profile local producers and may also survey its membership on possible future senarios developed throughout the Vivid Picture project.

More information on CAFF can be found at: www.caff.org.

Food Access Input Advisor:

The Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) is a non-profit 501(c)3, North American organization dedicated to building strong, sustainable, local and regional food systems that ensure access to affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food for all people at all times. The Coalition seeks to develop self-reliance among all communities in obtaining their food and to create a system of growing, manufacturing, processing, making available, and selling food that is regionally based and grounded in the principles of justice, democracy, and sustainability. CFSC has over 250 member organizations.

CFSC will provide data and insight to the Vivid Picture project on the current state of access to quality foods for diverse populations. CFSC will also share information gleaned about obstacles to food access as identified by community members."

More information about CFSC and community mapping case studies can be found at www.foodsecurity.org

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