Product Development and Innovation Consultant

Jared comes to Food Shift with extensive experience in the food industry, from working summers in kitchens/delis as a teenager to doing food product development/R&D work for large food retailers and manufacturers like Safeway after college. After becoming more interested in health and community building, he shifted his focus to working with food companies with more creative solutions towards health, wellness, and sustainability. He has developed a range of CPG products and brands, from perishable goods to innovative healthy snacks and beverages, leading everything from ideation to commercialization, and working side by side with manufacturers, co-packers, and the USDA. Right before the pandemic, Jared also founded a social enterprise catering company to help hire and train formerly incarcerated individuals.

With this new opportunity, he is excited to combine his background in food science, social entrepreneurship, and culinary with his values and passions for sustainability, food justice, and food equity. With the collaboration of the team and community, he hopes to help reshape the food system focused on health, sustainability, and accessibility for all!

Senior Food Recovery Specialist

As the key staff member of Food Shift’s food recovery operation, Robert is responsible for representing Food Shift’s orders and coordinating the food recovery pick up with our partner organizations: selecting the appropriate foods, loading and transporting them back to Food Shift Kitchen for weighing, redistribution, and processing.
Robert also contributes to documenting the food recovery program procedures from the partners’ point of view, to communicate the key points and incorporate these insights into the curriculum.

Operations and Communications Manager

Patty’s passion for food justice stems from their quest to understand their own Mexican heritage through the lens of food. Their studies in global food systems at Sonoma State University, and many attempts to recreate beloved family recipes, taught Patty to see the role that food can play in bringing communities together. They put this understanding into practice by managing Bay Area farmers’ markets for over eight years; working intimately with local governments, small family farms and the communities they feed. Apart from running day to day operations, Patty focused their efforts in supporting small farms and food purveyors by initiating various educational programs, multi-platform marketing, and promotional events. Their genuine curiosity for all things food has brought them to places ranging from family farms in Guatemala to a Marin fine dining restaurant. They spend their free time experimenting with seasonal produce in their kitchen and as a Slow Food East Bay Leadership Committee member.

Not only is Patty dedicated to working towards a more equitable, sustainable food system, but they hope to inspire others to find joy in discovering the vast connections found between food, our environment and ourselves. As the Operations and Communications Manager, Patty looks forward to using their experience and knowledge of the local food systems to continue learning and growing within the communities Food Shift serves.

Office Manager

Rizwan Dhanani brings over 20 years of software experience, ranging from engineering to support, including over 10 years in senior management positions at OSIsoft where he helped grow the support team from a handful of engineers at headquarters to a global organization spanning hundreds of engineers in twenty-plus countries. He designed, built, and managed a global onboarding program to train engineers on high-complexity products, cutting training time by more than half while enhancing depth of knowledge. He currently works as a senior consultant with FTWorks, providing strategy and management consulting to customer-facing organizations within software and hardware firms. Rizwan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley with a minor in Business Administration, with graduate work in Computer Science at Santa Clara University.

On a mission to learn more about the nonprofit world and align more closely with its values, he leverages his professional skills for Food Shift in a variety of ways including overseeing IT and Operations needs, assisting with business strategy, and providing mentorship.

Artist-in-Residence

Colin is a student of culture and history exploring how art can be used as a tool of community power. Born, bred, and based in San Francisco in Ramaytush Ohlone territory, Colin works as a public servant for the City and County of San Francisco’s Department of Children, Youth and Their Families and as a volunteer with local organizations like Food Shift and the historic Asian American arts center Kearny Street Workshop. Colin’s grandfather was a Toisanese migrant to the United States who worked as a ship’s cook and was active in the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union; it is this relationship between food, labor, and political struggle that Colin takes into his work on the Food Shift Cookbook.

Nonprofit Communications and Fundraising

A serial nonprofit volunteer, with over 30 years of nonprofit experiences ranging from community outreach, curriculum development, teacher-training, fundraising, event planning, writing/editing, project management and cross-sector collaboration, Lia offers Food Shift a broad perspective as a volunteer advisor/writer/editor. She has a B.A. in Linguistics from the University of Washington and did graduate work in geography and education. In past lives she worked for the Consulate General of Japan, Universität Stuttgart, Stanford University Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education, and launched Hillsborough Neighborhood Network, among others. She co-founded Bay Area Border Relief and volunteers with Slow Food East Bay, Protect Our Defenders, Jackie Speier for Congress, and Earthquake Country Alliance Bay Area, always gravitating towards nonprofits powered by people who don’t back away from doing the real work of improving their communities.

Vice President, Head of Marketing and Partnerships, Human Rights Campaign

Kelli extends more than 20 years of experience managing global brands and global marketing/advertising. Kelli is a creative marketer whose passion is bringing people and ideas together to address some of the world’s most challenging social, economic, and corporate issues. Currently, Kelli leads marketing for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest civil rights organization focused on LGBTQ equality. Prior to her current role with HRC, Kelli spent five years at Apple where she pioneered the strategic and creative development of value based communications across the company. Kelli led the Marcom team that helped Apple find its public voice around the values it holds dear: environmental responsibility, accessibility for people with disabilities, privacy, education, supplier responsibility, and inclusion and diversity.

Founder, Travonde, Inc.

Tina Choi is the CEO and Founder of Travonde, Inc. (Tra-VAHN-day) with the mission to enrich the lives of older adults — starting with education, leisure, and activities. Travonde is a targeted and personalized community platform for education, activities, wellness, and health that focuses on older adults and their families. She believes that we’re still in the beginning stages of a remarkable era in personal technology — and her mission is to harness the power of technology to empower everyone.

An MBA graduate from Cornell University, Tina spent more than a decade with Apple Inc. in global operations strategy roles overseeing $500 million in program spend. She worked on Apple’s most iconic products such as iPod, iPad, and iPhone — winning several awards for her work. She championed many Diversity and Inclusion initiatives while chairing one of Apple’s Diversity Network Association groups, and she co-founded the Apple Entrepreneur Camp.

Tina actively volunteers her time with nonprofit organizations and courses at Cornell University. She’s an Investor and Advisor for Astia, an international network of angel investors dedicated to women-led, high-growth ventures that provide their inclusive teams with unparalleled access to capital.

President, Peninsula Humane Society and SPCA
Former Chair, Governance Committee, Booker T. Washington Center (San Francisco)

Anthony serves as President of Peninsula Humane Society & SPCA (PHS/SPCA) in Burlingame, California. PHS/SPCA is one of the most innovative animal welfare organizations in the country, saving more than 5,000 animals’ lives each year. With more than 25 years of experience as a senior executive in nonprofits and foundations, Anthony has an acute knowledge of how organizations work, where the tension points are, and how to navigate through challenging transitions. He has spoken at national philanthropy and nonprofit conferences on the topics of succession planning, improving board governance, and various perspectives to increase equity, justice, and inclusion in hiring senior leaders. Previously, he served as an executive search and management consultant to nonprofits and founded and ran Blueridge Advisors, a national consulting firm that provided coaching, succession and transition planning, and executive search services to nonprofits.

Emeritus Chef and Culinary Director, Food Shift

Suzy Medios graduated from Bauman College as a Natural Chef, and she has a passion for good food that nourishes the body and mind. She has been a food justice activist for many years working with local community farms and food programs. Having worked in all different kitchens from soup kitchens to restaurants, catering coops, and corporate catering, food has been a lifelong passion. Suzy was fundamental in developing the current culinary program at Food Shift, including the Kitchen 101 module, increasing Food Shift’s meal production, crafting menus from recovered foods, and providing a quality workforce development experience for kitchen apprentices. She has moved to Maui to start a farm, to go one step closer to the source of ingredients that have inspired her, and to be inspired by the land. As the heart and soul of Food Shift, we are fortunate to continue to gain from her wisdom at the advisory board level.

Founder, DC Central Kitchen and LA Kitchen
Food Security Advisor to the Mayor of Santa Fe

Robert has been a leader in the food recovery/job training/social enterprise movement since 1989 when he founded the DC Central Kitchen — an inspiration for Food Shift — which he then led for 24 years. Robert is also the Founder of LA Kitchen and the Founder and President of CForward, an advocacy organization that rallies employees of nonprofits to educate candidates about the economic role that nonprofits play in every community and to support candidates who have detailed plans to strengthen the economy that includes nonprofits. As an award winning author (Begging for Change), he is a sought after speaker on subjects ranging from innovation, leadership, the role of nonprofits and social enterprise.

Robert’s expertise in nonprofit leadership and management, his deep knowledge in the food waste prevention space including food-related legislation, and his vast network complement Food Shift’s strategies and operations.

Culinary Director

The kitchen has always been a place of joy for Jen, who grew up spending time there with her grandmother, feeding her giant family. Her passion for nourishing others ultimately led her to leave her role at a clean water advocacy nonprofit and journey to the Bay Area to become a Certified Natural Chef at Bauman College. Then came eight fulfilling years of feeding people wholesome meals as an executive chef, teaching holistic cooking and nutrition, and implementing wellness programs. At Food Shift, Jen is responsible for all aspects of the production work: guiding apprentices through their catering internship within our culinary training program, planning selections of food to be recovered, and creating catering menus based on available foods. Jen specializes in devising methods to process foods for future use to keep them out of the waste stream and turning them into artisanal meals for all of our apprentices, staff, and clients.
As part of Operation Together, Food Shift’s COVID relief program that ensures recovered foods reach the communities we serve, Jen oversees food waste reduction efforts and develops culinary curriculum.

Executive Director

With 20+ years of experience as a senior executive, Yuka possesses skills from several domains that are rarely found in the same person: Justice, equity, diversity and inclusion (JEDI); nonprofit leadership; organizational management; policy/government; innovation strategy; entrepreneurship; and education. She started her career as a physics teacher determined to increase the number of girls taking physics, as it kept their options open for Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-based majors, and developed a 2 year Integrated Science experience-based curriculum. After founding two tech-startups, she led the tech-based economic development agency of the State of Hawaii, where she oversaw tech park development and incubation, created policy frameworks, drafted innovation legislation, and implemented entrepreneurship and other business programs, including Innovate HI, as NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership Center Director for Hawaii. Most recently, based on her executive consulting work on JEDI, and her experience with Astia, a non-profit operating globally to level the playing field for women entrepreneurs, she developed an inclusive leadership curriculum for Stanford Continuing Studies. Yuka was born and raised in Japan, and educated in Canada and the U.S. Having spent most of her professional life in Hawaii, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area via Denmark.

As a turnaround expert, Yuka excels at creating roadmaps for organizations and communities at a point of inflection by focusing on comprehensive strategies collaboratively implemented, and mindfully minimizing and navigating financial, operational, and cultural risks. The Food Shift team has successfully navigated several transitions already under her leadership to introduce several new programs including Operation Together, a COVID relief initiative, and a justice, equity, diversity and inclusion curriculum. She holds a BA in Physics from Reed College.