ARI ROSENBERG

Ari Rosenberg is a passionate activist working to create a more just society through community building, anti-racism trainings, and radical financing. She currently lives and works in Philadelphia with her amazing cat, Opal. Ari has been growing food for over 17 years in both rural and urban environments and supporting urban youth in connecting with their food, gaining entrepreneurship skills and developing and enhancing leadership skills for over 13 years. She is involved in a number of community initiatives that center leadership of color including Rooted in Community. For paid work she supports organizations and businesses working to build alternative economic systems as AmbitioUS Program Director, Catalyzing Capital with the Center for Cultural Innovation. When not growing, cooking, or preserving food you can find her biking or running around the city, reading a book, or writing letters to dear ones. 

BEATRIZ BECKFORD

Beatriz is an organizer and human rights activist with over 15 years experience who works tirelessly along side grassroots groups domestically and internationally to organize for social change.  Beatriz supports the development of campaigns lead by grassroots leaders on the front lines of the struggle for equity and social justice.  She currently serves as a Campaign Director with MomsRising specifically working on Juvenile Justice, Criminal Justice, Sentencing Reform and Food Justice issues. Beatriz is also the Co Founder and National Organizer for the National Black Food & Justice Alliance and contributing author to the Movement for Black Lives Policy Platform.  Beatriz collaborates with US and International based partners and allies to organize for the food justice movement. She works to provide grassroots coalition building support to communities across the country, and to develop strategic partnerships that strengthen communities power and self determination.  Beatriz centers intersectional movement building, transformative organizing, institution building, coalition building, allyship and accompaniment, storytelling and campaign development as key strategies in her work.  Beatriz is committed to lifting up the leadership of historically marginalized communities and to build power and capacity for grassroots groups to organize effectively, developing strategies rooted in the collective wisdom of grassroots communities.  Beatriz has elevated critical conversation on racial equity, intersectional movement building and organizing through several radical story telling publications including the Youth Food Justice Zine, and Food Justice Voices: What Ferguson Means for Food Justice Series. Beatriz's most important role is being a proud mother to a wonderful little boy, and when she can squeezes in creative work as a visual/design artist, urban design enthusiast and craft nerd.

TRAVIS MCKENZIE

Travis McKenzie was born in San Diego, California, and grew up in New Mexico. He has dedicated his life to serving mother earth and the many people that care about life. He has gone to conferences, visited the legislature to participate in making positive change, and has created and maintained gardens in Albuquerque and across New Mexico. He works at many gardens and provides seeds and knowledge to anyone who wants to plant. He also works at eight after school programs and helps facilitate gardening at schools. He is currently a garden coordinator for S.W.O.P. (the Southwest Organizing Project) with Project Feed The Hood.

JOHN WANG

John Wang works as the Regional Director for The Food Project’s North Shore site in Massachusetts. John has worked at TFP since 2005 and served as a founding staff member of the North Shore site.  Before coming to The Food Project, John traveled widely and lived in many different parts of the United States. After graduating from the University of Illinois, John worked for City Year in Seattle, participated in AmeriCorps VISTA at an HIV clinic in San Diego, and earned an MS in international health policy and management from Brandeis University. John also holds a certificate of Non-profit Leadership and Management from Boston University. Outside of work, he loves to disconnect and backpack, capture unique perspectives and moments on film, and continue to cook and try many different and tasty things.  John first became involved in RIC in 2005 and helped to organize the 2009 Maine and Massachusetts RIC conference.

AYISAH YUSUF

Ayisah worked for the Rural Coalition as a fellow in Washington, D.C. for 3 years. She helped with the organization of the office and did computer work and social media. While in her position, she got to do Hill drops, participate in a gala at the Press Club and to sit in on Small Farms Conferences. She’s traveled to North Carolina to be apart of the American Indian Mother’s Conference and helped at an important GOAT meeting on the Farm Bill. Throughout her childhood, Ayisah traveled to many different places all over the world. From Guatemala to Prague to South Dakota and loves to travel. She is very involved in her culture and spirituality being both Indigenous Native American & African American and participates in many cultural relevant events. In 2015 she helped to create the Youth Food Justice Zine and works with the DC based group Ecohermanas a women’s group working with Mother Earth and apart of creating a radio show for women of color called Spirit of Resilience. She runs her own blog IceTurtleGirl.blog where she writes about social justice issues and events she participates in. Ayisah first became involved with RIC by attending the 2012 Iowa RIC summit and then in 2013 being part of a panel of youth of color with Will Allen. She has been a board member ever since.

DORON COMERCHERO

Doron Comerchero is the co-founder and director of “Food, What?!”– a youth empowerment and food justice program in Santa Cruz, California, using food and sustainable agriculture, as the vehicle for growing strong, healthy, and inspired teens.  Roots deep in the East Coast, Doron spent most of his 20’s bouncing around the South Bronx as a community organizer and outreach coordinator for NYC’s community gardening program, GreenThumb.  It was during this time that Doron attended the second Rooted in Community Conference in 2000 and became deeply inspired.  Following that event, Doron joined the board of the American Community Gardening Association and chaired the youth committee.  At that point, Doron joined a team of two other individuals repping RIC’s early support structure to help lead and guide RIC for the next five years. Rich soil called, and he found himself having transitioned from city life to living in a tent on a beautiful piece of farmland in Santa Cruz as an apprentice at the UCSC Farm and Garden.  To continue to build his toolkit to eventually create “Food, What?!” he decided to try on his hat farming full time as part of a crew on a 50-acre site in Western Massachusetts called Food Bank Farm. Doron returned to Santa Cruz in 2007 to start FoodWhat at Life Lab (a local non-profit).  Doron rejoined the RIC Advisory Council that same year, and FoodWhat was part of the Bay Area Collective that led the 2008 RIC Summer Summit.  Doron continues to serve on the Council and is often stirring up impromptu dance parties or motivating folks to get out to roller skating jams.