Food Institute Graduate Council

Hannah Ellis is a graduate student at UC Berkeley, pursuing a Master of Information Systems and Management with a Certificate in Food Systems. Her research sits at the intersection of agroecology, digital infrastructure, and political economy, exploring how technological innovation can support—rather than undermine—just and sustainable food systems.

Hannah spent five years in the tech and human rights space, working with organizations such as BSR (Business for Social Responsibility) and the Human Rights Foundation. In these roles, she led human rights impact assessments and sustainability strategy projects for major technology companies, examining how digital tools shape social and economic systems. This past summer she was a graduate researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, contributing to scholarship on digital ecosystems and governance.

Hannah’s work is informed by both academic inquiry and hands-on experience in regenerative agriculture. Before graduate school she worked on a 25-acre organic vegetable farm in Maine, gaining direct insight into diversified farming practices, soil health management, and small-scale food systems. Her time in the field has shaped her critical perspective on the role of technology in agriculture, particularly the risks of techno-solutionism that prioritizes corporate interests over farmer autonomy and ecological resilience.

Elizabeth Kunibe recently moved to San Francisco from Juneau, Alaska. Before moving to Alaska, she had a career in Criminal Justice. In Alaska she attended the University of Alaska Southeast graduating with a BA in Anthropology; Minor in Northwest Coast Art; and Minor in Alaska Native Studies. She also had her own business, Bowe Research and Consulting and contracted with the Alaska State Museum. The museum’s collections include cultural materials from the Indigenous people of Southeast Alaska, Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, the Athabascan cultures of Interior Alaska, the Inupiaq people of the North Coast, the Yup’ik people of Southwest Alaska, the Alutiiq people of Prince William Sound and Kodiak Island, and the Unangax̂ from the Aleutian chain. After graduating she focused primarily on Indigenous Food Systems with an emphasis on
ethnobotany and spent five summers studying in Ecuador. Her education continued at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in the Cross-Cultural Studies Department earning her MA in Indigenous Studies and continuing to the PhD program where she is currently a PhD Candidate in Indigenous Studies. Her research in food systems continued in Alaska and South America studying the dissemination of foods to Alaska. One of the earliest plants to arrive in Alaska from South America was the potato and is a focus of her research. Her dissertation research examines the interactions between Indigenous people and their plants and foods. Her presentation
will discuss the journey of working in field studies and laboratory DNA analysis in collaboration with plant geneticists. Analysis shows potatoes were originally introduced to Alaska from South America. Her research helps track the dissemination of the plants growing in Alaska to their points of origin. Alaska Native interest in this project is helping restore and revive the early agricultural period the Tlingit and Haida people of Southeast
Alaska that was lost to National Parks, State Forest Lands, and Homesteaders in land takeovers.

Multidisciplinary artist and researcher working at the intersection of social communication, participatory art, and prefigurative politics. Her practice seeks to reconnect urban and rural communities through the valorization of traditional ecological knowledge embedded in food and food systems. Focusing on the preservation of culturally appropriate Mexican foods—such as quelites, edible and medicinal plants native to Mesoamerica—her work challenges dietary homogenization and advocates for food sovereignty through projects that intertwine art, non-human pedagogies, and ecosocial organizing. This labor reflects her commitment to weaving local networks of situated knowledge, asserting food as a site of resistance, reciprocity, and regeneration against colonial and extractivist logics.

Through Dupla Molcajete, a collaboration with Canadian artist Zoë Heyn-Jones, she explores the nexus of art, food, and culture, aligning with her goal of amplifying ancestral and contemporary ecological practices as forms of resilience against global warming. Together, they investigate entomophagy (insect consumption) within Indigenous rural contexts in Mexico. During fieldwork, they analyze the sociohistorical dimensions of entomophagy in relation to capitalism and climate change in Indigenous territories. Their findings have been documented in publications by Islario (MX), University of Illinois (US), University of Toronto (CA), and Public Parking (CA). In 2022, they presented their research in the course *Food Cosmogonies* by The Gram Ounce (US). Beyond fieldwork, Dupla Molcajete facilitates culinary encounters in urban settings to confront the yuck factor and racial stereotypes tied to insect consumption.

Concurrently, Paz Jiménez co-founded The Food Commons with Mexican activist Dalila Estrella, a platform critically examining hegemonic food narratives in Mexico. Through collaborative methodologies—such as writing, audiovisual documentation, and collective drawing—they interrogate intersections of race, class, gender, and species in food culture, advancing anti-colonial ecosocial models. The platform also organizes gatherings like the Network for Food Culture Studies to forge alliances that amplify regenerative alternatives rooted in collective practices.

Paz Jiménez has presented her research at conferences such as Deep Commons (IE), Utopic Studies Society (UK), and ACTING AS IF. Prefigurative Politics in Theory and Practice (CZ), while participating in networks like the Anarchist Studies Network and the North American Anarchist Studies Network. Her texts—published or forthcoming with Penguin (MX), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (MX), SUNY Press (US), and Hyphen-Journal (UK)—foster transnational dialogues across art, academia, and activism. These works aim to dismantle hierarchies and envision speculative futures where food embodies collective memory, planetary care, and radical justice.

Yuki Kato is an urban sociologist whose research interests intersect the subfields of social stratification, food and environment justice, culture and consumption, and symbolic interaction. She has conducted research on the rise of urban agricultural cultivation and the alternative food movement in post-Katrina New Orleans, with a particular focus on food access disparity, spatial and social landscape of alternative food activism, and contested meanings of local during a major urban transformation. Her new book, Gardens of Hope: Cultivating Food and the Future in a Post-Disaster City (NYU Press 2025) is based on longitudinal in-depth interviews with urban growers, local organizations, and archival data, the study examines what motivated a group of individuals to start an urban garden or a farm in post-Katrina New Orleans as the city was undergoing rapid changes. Her new research projects continue to examine the role of people engaging in social changes through unconventional methods, such as urban agriculture and social entrepreneurialism, in a gentrifying city. She also has a project underway that explores historical erasure and “discovery” of folk gardening/farming in urban BIPOC communities across the United States.

Robin Marsh is a socio-economist with over 25 years of experience in international agriculture and rural development. Marsh received her PhD from the Food Research Institute, Stanford University. She subsequently worked for the World Vegetable Center on socio-economic and nutritional benefits of home/community gardening, and for the Food and Agriculture Organization on local institution strengthening for food security and sustainable rural livelihoods. Marsh joined UC Berkeley in 2000 as Academic Coordinator of the Center for Sustainable Resource Development and Co-Director of the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program (2000-2013). She has been a lecturer at UC Berkeley’s College of Natural Resources since 2003, teaching in the field of Population, Environment & Development, and is Affiliate Faculty with The Blum Center for Developing Economies. Robin Marsh is a founding leader of the The MasterCard Foundation Scholars Program (MCFSP) at UC Berkeley, a major partnership to provide high-achieving, economically disadvantaged youth from sub-Saharan Africa the opportunity for quality university education and leadership development. Since 2013, Marsh is lead researcher on the multi-university study, “Career and Life Trajectories of African Alumni of International Universities”. The collaborative study will produce findings relevant for current MCF Scholars and for enhanced understanding of the diverse outcomes and impacts of an international education. Marsh is currently the Academic Partner with the Global Fund for Women’s Initiative: Rural Women Striding Forward, working with the sub-Saharan African team to develop robust research tools and disseminate findings to policy-makers. She is also a fellow with the non-profit organization EcoAgriculture Partners, and associated global initiative, Landscapes for People, Food and Nature. She is co-author of the article, “Diversified Farming Systems: Impacts and Adaptive Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States, Norway and China.”

Marisa Raya is a doctoral candidate in the UC Davis Geography program, with a Designated Emphasis in both Native American Studies and African and African-American Studies. Her research has grown out of 25 years of activism and public sector experience creating and implementing socioeconomic equity and sustainability goals, programs and accountability. She has a special love for community land stewardship and democratic processes to increase, preserve, or return land access for cultural groups that have experienced, or are experiencing, land dispossession.

Marisa has been lucky to work for California public agencies that want to prioritize and invest in equity goals. She managed the City of Oakland’s Economic Recovery Advisory Council and led both the City’s 2021 Equitable Economic Recovery Plan and 2018-2020 Economic Development Strategy. As a Regional Planner for the Association of Bay Area Governments, she helped define urban displacement as a planning and public policy issue and led Community Advisory groups through the creation of anti-displacement goals, measures and policies, as a component of the region’s first 40-year land use and transportation plan. She is currently an Advisor to the State of California’s Agricultural Land Equity Task Force.

For the last decade, Marisa has taught Urban and Regional Planning at Stanford University. She started her planning career as the founding coordinator for the Program on Human Rights and Justice at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned a Masters degree in Spatial Planning from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, and an accelerated BA with honors from Columbia University. She has five sons and is married to Richard Raya, a national leader in cradle-to-career organizing and anti-poverty work.

Vanessa Reeves graduated from San Jose State University with a degree in Public Health and minors in Business and Spanish. Her research explores the intersections of race, land stewardship, and food justice, focusing on addressing these issues in underserved Black and Brown communities through community-driven, context-specific solutions. In her role as a Senior Clinical Programs Coordinator at Roots Community Health Center.

Vanessa drives successful diabetes management interventions by integrating food justice principles. She is deeply involved in initiatives that promote community food security, spearheading the implementation of a vegetable prescription voucher program that enabled patients to receive free fruits and vegetables at local farmers markets—promoting diverse participation, community reinvestment, and knowledge of the Market Match program.

In addition to her professional work, Vanessa is a Community Advisory Board member for Fresh Approach, a food justice organization in the Bay Area, where she leads efforts in food policy advocacy. Her volunteer work focuses on creating systemic change by pushing for policies that promote food security, environmental sustainability, and social justice. With a strong public health background, extensive clinical experience, and a deep commitment to equity, Vanessa is dedicated to advancing the work of food justice in community health settings, particularly those who have historically been excluded.

Mairi is a doctoral student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management’s Society & Environment Division, with a designated emphasis from Berkeley’s Folklore Graduate Group. She is a data driven storyteller, seedkeeper, writer, and researcher working at the intersection of food systems, capital, land, natural resource management & governance, and community-based economic development. Mairi works with methods from the social sciences and humanities, including archival, ethnographic, and community-based, participatory applied anthropological methodologies, as well as socio-ecological systems, econometric, and network analysis. Prior to UC Berkeley, Mairi led and collaborated on research projects for community-based organizations across the United States, with a focus on regional food systems development, traditional ecological knowledge and ecosystems management, environmental higher education at tribal colleges and universities, and equitable finance. Her work currently explores ocean governance, access, property rights, and capital in relation to multi-species justice, marine aquaculture, and the seafloor.

Aya (Nadya Aulia Vitriastuti) is a Master of Development Practice candidate at UC Berkeley, passionate about creating people-centered solutions in food systems, economic empowerment, and community resilience. Originally from Indonesia, she brings a grounding in business, technology, and storytelling to her work in international development.

Aya’s current research, From Subsidy to Self-Empowerment, explores how Saba Grocers’ social enterprise model helps address food deserts in Oakland by bringing fresh, affordable produce directly to neighborhood corner stores. Her work focuses on how this model enhances not just access to healthy food, but also supports dignity, autonomy, and everyday wellbeing for families navigating food insecurity.

Before graduate school, Aya worked in the IT sector, helping companies grow through digital strategy and operational improvement. She later transitioned to community-based work with Atma Connect, where she supports women entrepreneurs and smallholder farmers through digital literacy training and localized economic tools. At Atma, she also contributes to building internet-based systems that strengthen disaster resilience in remote areas, combining technology and local knowledge to close access gaps during emergencies.

Sarah is a fourth-year student at UC Berkeley. Before joining BFI, she interned for the White House Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation Office, where she supported the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act. She has also worked with the Regeneration Field Institute, an environmental education program based out of Manabi, Ecuador; where she taught hands-on workshops on composting, syntropic agroforestry, land restoration, and supply chain sustainability. On campus, she is the Berkeley Student Food Collective co-chair and volunteers at the Gill Tract Community Farm. She is currently conducting an honors thesis analyzing strategies to scale regenerative agriculture practices globally. Her passion for environmentalism stems from her time advocating for communities affected by fossil fuel infrastructure in her hometown of Los Angeles. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, thrift shopping, and spending time in nature.

Shuo Yu is a Ph.D. candidate in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research explores regenerative agriculture and agricultural policy, focusing on their effects on environmental sustainability, climate change adaptation, and mitigation. She employs econometric models, remote sensing data, and machine learning techniques to analyze agricultural and environmental outcomes.

Her primary field is Agricultural Economics, with secondary fields in Environmental and Energy Economics and Empirical Industrial Organization. She holds an M.S. in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University and a B.S. in International Trade & Economics and Accounting (double major) from the University of International Business and Economics.

Josh loves food! When he’s not thinking about eating it, he’s thinking about its journey through the supply chain. Prior to Alameda Food Bank, Joshworked in warehousing and logistics for a local favorite coffee company. Josh jumped at the opportunity to marry his supply chain knowledge with advocacy for individuals who are food insecure on the island community of Alameda. Josh holds a law degree with an emphasis on environmental law. Not only does he strive to apply this knowledge to be an advocate for food insecure individuals but the environment as well. He was born in San Leandro, CA and currently resides there with his partner and two daughters (who also really love food!). When he’s not thinking about food, he’s thinking about riding bikes and playing music with his band.

Amos is Founder and Chief Planting Officer of 100K Trees for Humanity a Black led urban reforestation nonprofit that helps cities and communities to plant trees for climate, for equity and for public health. He is a statewide appointed member of CALFIRE’s California Urban Forestry Advisory Council, and serves at the county level on the Alameda County Agricultural Advisory Committee as Urban Ag, Social and Environmental Justice Chair. Amos serves on Alameda’s Environmental Task Force CASA – Community Action for a Sustainable Alameda, and is the former regional Vice Chair of the Bay Area Climate Emergency Mobilization Task Force. He is Co-author of the Climate Emergency Declaration Resolution for the City of Alameda, and for Alameda County. He is a CORO Fellows Program graduate in Leadership and Public Affairs, 92-LA, and a former Ohio Youth Conservation Corps Member. Creatively, Amos is a published poet and former literary and performing at producer and board member. He is awarded for his environmental work by The California Urban Forestry Council, The Jefferson Awards, The Grist 50, and is a TEDx Speaker. He lives with his family and two cats in the island city of Alameda, California.

Hugo Grégoire is a Management Analyst at StopWaste, where he supports food waste reduction initiatives and manages grants to increase and maintain edible food recovery capacity in Alameda County. He helps monitor critical edible food recovery efforts across jurisdictions, maintains the list of businesses required to donate surplus edible food under SB 1383, and played a key role in implementing the county’s Edible Food Recovery Reporting System. Hugo also has the pleasure of coordinating the Alameda County Food Recovery Network, providing outreach and support to local food recovery organizations to strengthen collaboration and build a more connected food recovery system across the county.

Kristida is a PhD student in the Environmental Engineering Department at UC Berkeley. She is interested in urban agriculture, water management, and all things compost. In her free time she likes to cuddle with her two cats, try a new recipe, or volunteer at a farm or garden.

Anna Kathawala (she/her) is a second-year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley studying Society & Environment and Political Science. She has long been interested in the intersection of regenerative agriculture, carbon sequestration, climate policy, and food systems and was thrilled to be able to put those interests to use in working on this project! Investigating the impact of SB 1383 on Bay Area communities has been a very eye-opening view into the tensions between those writing policy and those making it happen and Anna is excited to share the team’s findings.

Taylor Baisey (they/them) completed their MPH in Public Health Nutrition from UC Berkeley in 2023. During their graduate studies, they worked on farmworker health research, created a weight-inclusive student group, and analyzed the Albany Compost Hub’s contribution to SB-1383 requirements and the broader community. They are broadly interested in sustainable food systems transitions in the US, community health and well-being, and social equity within the food system with a methodological focus on implementation science and mixed methodology. Currently, Taylor is a research data analyst at UCSF supporting quantitative and qualitative substance use medicine studies at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital.