Oakland Food Policy Council

Alethea Marie Harper
Coordinator, OFPC
aharper.ofpc (at) foodfirst.org
510-654-4400 ext 233

Alethea is Coordinator of the Oakland Food Policy Council (OFPC), a new organization being incubated at Food First. Before starting at the OFPC in 2008, Alethea was the AgParks and Food Systems Project Manager at SAGE, where she coauthored the San Francisco Foodshed Assessment: Think Globally - Eat Locally. Alethea holds a Master's degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley. Her award-winning Master's thesis was entitled Repairing the Local Food System: Long Range Planning for People's Grocery. In early 2008, Alethea went on a research trip to Latin America, where she studied food systems and urban agriculture.

Asiya Wadud
Researcher, OFPC and Food First
awadud (at) foodfirst.org
510-654-4400

Asiya is a researcher with the Oakland Food Policy Council. She graduated from the College of Wooster in 2004 with a degree in urban sociology and African American studies, and plans to pursue graduate studies in urban planning. Her senior thesis at Wooster examined long term public housing residents' reactions to imminent gentrification in the Cabrini Green Projects in Chicago. She is interested in planning for urban food security in historically disenfranchised communities, particularly in low income communities of color.

Eric Holt-Gimenez
Executive Director, Food First
eholtgim (at) foodfirst.org
510-654-4400 ext 227

During the three-year incubation period, the Food First Executive Director will work directly with the OFPC Coordinator.

Eric Holt-Giménez assumed the position of executive director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy on July 17, 2006. Eric is the author of the 2009 Food First Book Food Rebellions! Crisis and the Hunger for Justice. His earlier book, Campesino a Campesino: Voices from Latin America’s Farmer to Farmer Movement for Sustainable Agriculture chronicles the development of this movement in Mexico and Central America over two and a half decades.

Eric comes to Food First from the Bank Information Center in Washington D.C. where he has served as the Latin America Program Manager. After spending more than two decades in Central America, Eric returned to the University of California at Santa Cruz to complete a Ph.D. in Environmental Studies in 2002.

In 1996 Food First released a shorter Food First Development Report by Eric titled The Campesino a Campesino Movement: Farmer-Led, Sustainable Agriculture in Central America and Mexico. Eric continued his work with these farmers as part of his Ph.D. A measure of Eric’s dedication to sharing the lessons of this movement has been his eagerness to translate his Ph.D. study into this new book that can now be shared with students, environmentalists, activists, and scientists who seek to understand how local work is affected by global decisions and what lessons can be learned from these farmer- trainers. In Eric’s words “successful social movements are formed by integrating activism with livelihoods. These integrated movements create the deep sustained social pressure that produces political will—the key to changing the financial, governmental, and market structures that presently work against sustainability.”

Food First Staff
510-654-4400

During the three-year incubation period, Food First’s Operations officer, Administrative Assistance officer and Development Director also will contribute some of their time to the OFPC.

Food First Interns

An impressive team of Food First interns is helping the OFPC with research, event planning, fundraising, and strategic planning:

Current Interns:

• Alexandra Hudson
• Bernalyn Ruiz
• Beth Sanders
• Colleen Lynch
• Dwight Hobbs
• Evan O'Donnell
• Kate Grace

Past Interns:

• Jamie Nash
• Alexandria Fisher
• NeEddra James
• Autif Kamal
• Elisa Oceguera
• Mandy Workman
• Sophie Turrell
• Ashly Wolf
• Frances Lambrick
• Ingrid Budrovich
• Polly Clare-Roth
• Amanda El-Khoury
• Chris Henrick
• Mihir Mankad
• Natalia Margolis
• Teresa Shellmon
• Sophie Turrell
• Ellen Tyler
• Asiya Wadud