PEOPLE
MEET OUR TEAM
Fabiola SANTIAGO
Board of Directors
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Fabiola is a diasporic Zapotec and a descendant of mezcal makers from the “World Capital of Mezcal”, Santiago Matatlán, Oaxaca, Mexico. Her experiences as a formerly undocumented person and her connection to Oaxaca’s rich culture anchors her commitment to equity and cultural preservation.
Fabiola worked in the restaurant industry for 10 years, which helped her pay for college and graduate school. She earned her BA in sociology and Masters in Public Health from the University of California, Los Angeles. She also worked in the non-profit sector for 10+ years conducting research and using her public health training to advocate for policies, build programs, projects, and plans that center health equity. She shares more personal experiences on food, mezcal, identity, and motherhood on OaxacTheTalk.com. Her favorite meal is anything her mother makes.
Stefani Renee Medley
Board of Directors
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Stefani Renée is a recipe developer, photographer, writer, and podcast host based in the SF/Bay Area who inherited a love of cooking, throwing parties, telling stories, and creating from her Granny Octavia. This fuels her passion for good food, creating a beautiful lifestyle, and building community through sharing food with others.
While her tribe hails from the south, Stefani Renée grew up in the Bay Area and her style of cooking mixes a dose of southern charm & flavor with a lot of California soul.
When Stefani Renée is not developing or photographing recipes, she’s interviewing tastemakers in the food community and beyond for her food and lifestyle blog Savor & Sage where she shares how soulful cooking goes far beyond what’s typically portrayed in popular culture but instead embodies a delicious mix of simplicity and complexity, texture, and dishes full of flavor with deep roots in the African diaspora.
Stefanie Renée is passionate about amplifying the voices, work and expertise of BIPOC people in the food space and beyond and cultivates that work through her podcast Savor and Sage Unplugged, as a founding member of Eat the Culture, and her work on the advisory board of Food Culture Collective.
Caleb Zigas
Board of Directors
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Caleb was accidentally hired as an assistant pastry chef at Ruppert’s Restaurant, in his hometown of Washington DC, when he was 16 years old, and learned his best professional lesson there; "If you need to run to the oven, whatever's in there is already burnt". He has worked dish lines at national chains, service counters for independent butcher shops and front of the house for some of the best restaurants in the country (and some of the worst too).
Caleb joined La Cocina in 2005, and was lucky enough to be a part of the leadership team there until 2021 opening over 40 restaurants, writing a book, launching a street food festival, building a 7,000 square foot food hall, and creating a legacy of out of office messages. He's a James Beard Award Winner, a Yoshiyama Young Entrepreneur who's no longer so young, and, according to 2007's 7x7 Magazine the Best Waiter in San Francisco.
Now, he has two kids that run him in circles, a consulting practice working with multiple non-profits and a role at the newly launched Waverley Street Foundation focused on the intersection of climate and community. All of this work is rooted in the belief that we should all try, whenever we can, to sit at any table we are invited to and share a meal. Even better if that meal is a mollete, something with miso or a steamed bun.
Courtney Rae Gonzales
Staff
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Courtney was born in Napa, California and has called the Bay Area home since 2008. Her maternal lineages are primarily from Scotland, Ireland, Denmark, and Sweden, and paternal lineages are primarily from the Mexican states of Coahuila, Chihuahua, Durango, and Sinaloa. Her passion is in cultivating individual and community health through organizing, education, and small business development around food systems, ancestral food ways, folk herbalism, and astrology.
She earned an undergraduate degree in health education from San Francisco State University and a graduate degree in public affairs from University of San Francisco. Her research centered food access through a justice and sovereignty lens. She studied herbal medicine and earth-based ancestral practices for wellness at Ancestral Apothecary based in Oakland. Courtney has worked in food systems for more than 15 years, focusing on food and apothecary access, food as medicine, and building respectful relationships with plants and the land.
Sarai Montes
Staff
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Sarai Montes is a diasporic Mixteca (Ñuu Savi) and Salvadoran visual artist, born and raised in the Bay Area. Her art celebrates her communities while also highlighting collective struggles in order to push others to imagine a better world.
Sarai received her BA in Art Practice, Ethnic Studies and Film and Media Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. These disciplines further influenced her passion for creative storytelling. Her previous work experiences have allowed her to grow her skills in podcasting and video production. Her art practice includes printmaking, photography and mixed medianinstallations.
Some common themes in her work are transnational identity, Indigenous resistance, Indigenous feminism and girlhood. Her communities and the historical use of art as a tool for resistance influence her work which embraces the idea of the personal as political. When she isn’t creating, she enjoys going on walks, reading at the park and sharing meals with loved ones.
