Our Organization
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Meet the Roots Staff
Meet the Roots Board of Directors
San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project is a California non-profit corporation and a 501(c)3 tax exempt educational charity. We are governed by our volunteer Board of Directors under the guidance of our community. Supporting Roots' work are members of our volunteer team who help run our programs and carry the responsibility of running a grassroots non-profit organization.
Our work is guided by an organizational model adopted by the Board on February 10, 2010. Click here or on the image to the the right to download a printable copy of the chart.
Meetings
Please use our Contact form to find out when our next meeting is.
Meet the Roots Staff
Farmer, Wild Willow Farm & Education Center
Misha Johnson
Born and raised in Norwich, Vermont, Misha graduated from Connecticut College in 2008 with a BA in Environmental Studies. While at Connecticut College Misha ran Sprout!, the on-campus sustainable food initiative and organic garden, and also helped establish a campus-wide composting system. Before moving to San Diego, Misha gained farming experience in New England, Costa Rica, and France. He joined San Diego Roots as a volunteer in the Fall of 2009. Misha also works at Suzie's Farm.
Before moving to San Diego, Misha did research to see what was going on in the food movement in San Diego, and immediately Roots popped out for its vision of developing the local food system in San Diego. After he arrived and joined Roots, he realized that not only was Roots expressing vision, but also had the passion, the intuition, and the drive to make it happen. Misha found Roots everywhere expressing and sharing with everyone a love for healthy, local, and organic food.
Wild Willow Farm Field Trip Coordinator
Lisa Ordóñez
Lisa is an Imperial Beach resident and a botanist working on native plant recovery projects right in our neighboring Tijuana River Valley. Lisa's journey into sustainable agriculture started in college where she was a leader in campus composting at UC Berkeley. In her subsequent travels in Latin America and West Africa, her interest in sustainability and conservation deepened when she observed the ancient knowledge of indigenous farmers along with the scars left by oil exploration and industrialized agriculture. After college, she spent many years working in conservation as a parks system botanist. Most recently, as a mother of two young daughters, she has focused her energy in education and childbirth, having taught Spanish, botany, and childbirth preparation. She's a long-time organic gardener and is very excited to help strengthen and grow the Wild Willow Farm field trip program. When she's not mothering, botanizing or gardening, Lisa enjoys dancing West African dance!
Regional Garden Education Center Coordinator
Erynn Pierce
Erynn is a yoga teacher, mother of two, urban farmer, and an intern at Wild Willow Farm. A lifelong lover of the outdoors, she grew up playing in the mossy forests of Washington state, and hiking to hidden aquifers on the islands of Saipan and Guam. Diversity and the bounty of nature in these settings inspired her to study biology and zoology as an undergraduate at San Diego State university, where she worked in conservation research on the Mexican Gray Wolf and the Indian White Rhinoceros. A shift from animal science to food systems came about rather unexpectedly with the birth of her two children, when the most important questions became, "What do I feed my young family? What impact does the answer to this have?" Feeling a deeper connection to all living systems as a human and spiritual being has been the underlying focus to everything, no matter the disguise.
Erynn is actively farming an acre of land in Spring Valley, honing the skills she's learned as an intern at Wild Willow Farm. She is working on a large-scale school garden, with the hopes of feeding even more children healthy local food. Now that she's on the Roots team, she is looking to educate and empower more people to effect real change in their communities. Feed the soul, feed the family, feed the community, feed the world!
Meet the Roots Board of Directors
Lauren Shaw, President
Lauren joined the Roots BOD in November 2009. She holds a masters in ecology from UC Davis, where she studied sustainable agriculture policy and behavior. Lauren was drawn to Roots by its focus on changing the food consumption patterns and farming knowledge of the general public for the sake of a more sustainable food system, and she feels lucky to have found such a passionate group of like-minded people!
As fundraising coordinator and lead grantwriter, Lauren is working to raise money for Roots' various worthy projects through grant proposals and donation campaign development. She learned grant writing skills writing academic proposals as a graduate student, and is continuing to hone her writing for nonprofit funders.
Mel Lions, Secretary/Treasurer
San Diego was a much different place when Mel's family moved to the area in 1959. Growing up in South Bay, he remembers farms and dairies throughout Imperial Beach and Chula Vista, and driving through the fertile fields of Mission Valley. He says that his family was eating the best local food on the planet, but this was the norm, not the exception. In the '70s he went into the restaurant business, buying fresh produce from vendors in downtown San Diego. But a transformation was underway, resulting in the loss of our local food system.
In 2000, when a farmer friend needed some help to fend off developers wanting to make another suburb out of his farm, Mel, a graphic designer, thought he might be able to help make some flyers. From this humble beginning a movement was sprung, and now Mel spends almost full time working to bring back and celebrate the culture of local food in our region.
Julia Dashe
A San Diego co-founder, Julia started her farming adventure apprenticing at Good Faith Farm in Jamul, the farm Roots attempted to save from development in 2001. After working on farms in Vermont and New Hampshire, she attended the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems program at UC Santa Cruz and received a Certificate in Ecological Horticulture. After returning to her hometown of San Diego, she worked with Roots to create an 8,000 square foot outdoor garden classroom at Morse High School in southeast San Diego.
In June of 2008, she was asked to help City College create an urban farm on their downtown campus, where she continues to help manage and teach a new generation of farmers today. When she's not digging in the dirt, she's playing her accordian and singing songs that weave 'culture' back into agriculture.
Angie Vorhies
Angie is a poet, photographer, and founding member of San Diego Roots. She loves living in North Park with her three daughters and eating out of her front-yard vegetable garden. Her interest in providing the freshest, most-nutritious food for her young family led her to The Good Faith Organic Farm. Working there helped her understand the connection between eating well, good health, and taking care of the land. When that farm was threatened with development, she decided to take a stand and work to save the farm. The community of people who joined her became San Diego Roots.
Angie is inspired by the food culture of Italy. While living and traveling there, she has learned much about the value of traditional and regional food. An avid cook, she shops at farmer's markets in San Diego, because not only does she find the best things to eat there, but every week she gets to reconnect with the many chefs, farmers, neighbors and friends that share her passion for great, local food.
Rocio Weiss
Rocio, who grew up on both sides of the border, describes herself as a "lifelong foodie." In her role as Principal of San Diego's Samuel B. Morse High School, in 2005 she was the driving force in establishing the organic Terra Nova garden on the campus in what was an unused lot. At the same time, she helped develop an after-school program that paid students to work and learn about where their food comes from in the garden. The Terra Nova Garden grew food for the campus culinary arts program and turned the vegetable waste and made compost.
Now, as a Principal at San Diego High School (our area's first High School), she continues her interest in teaching our inner city youth about sustainability, nutrition, and the possibility for a better future for themselves and our planet, and encouraging a new generation to connect their food choices with their physical, emotional and intellectual health.
Ian Miller
Ian Miller is a passionate food justice advocate and has worked with organizations such as San Diego Food Not Lawns, California Rare Fruit Growers and the International Rescue Committee to educate people about how to grow more of their own food. He has also been on the planning group for the Cultivating Food Justice Conference since 2008. Ian is an avid gardener, biker and generally a fan of all things sustainable.
Bob Greenamyer
Bob is another Roots board member who comes from the world of education, having served as a teacher and principal in the Poway School District for many years. With a love of tools and building projects and looking for something to do after he retired, he began attending Monday Roots meetings at People's Co-op. Being someone who loves to help people, when someone presented the idea of having a program that helped folks build organic gardens at their homes, Bob raised his hand. Little did he know that that was the beginning of Victory Gardens San Diego, which Bob has been the guiding force of since it's inception.
Bylaws
SD Roots is governed by our bylaws, initially adopted on December 4, 2007 and amended on January 10, 2010. To download a current version of this document, click here.
Images and material © 2001-2011 copyright San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project