Kevin Ridley | Chair

Farmer Kevin is a Los Angeles native. He is a community leader driven to enhance urban agriculture and conservation. Kevin is an avid outdoorsman who enjoys gardening, fishing, skiing, hiking, boating, and camping. Gardens represent rejuvenation, peace, and community. Additionally, he is a seed saver who focuses on culturally relevant fruits and vegetables. Kevin holds a bachelor’s degree in Public Administration from San Diego State University.

Clare Fox | Vice Chair

Clare Fox joined Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders as executive director in January 2024. Clare has dedicated her life to generating powerful partnerships for an equitable and regenerative food system. She began her work journey in independent media and grassroots organizing, advocating and reporting on a broad range of issues including immigrant rights, youth development, tenant rights and community land ownership. Clare became involved in anti-racism organizing starting in 2001 and focused her efforts on training and mobilization of white communities in racial justice movements. She then found her passion for food as a human right after recovering from diet-related health challenges. As a graduate student, she researched food policy councils as an innovation in participatory democracy for the Mayor’s Food Policy Taskforce.

Most recently she served as vice president of strategic partnerships at Everytable, a fast-growing social enterprise with a mission to make healthy food affordable and accessible for everyone, everywhere. She has served as a board member for non-profit organizations working on community composting, urban gardens, and economic development. She is a third generation Los Angelena with a master’s of urban planning from University of California, Los Angeles.

Michael Martinez | Secretary

Michael is a former 5th grade teacher, author of the children’s book, Composting for Community, father to Ezra and Diego, and the founder and Executive Director of LA Compost. He is currently a Program Manager at the 11th Hour Project.

Michael has long supported schools, churches, community gardens, farmers markets, libraries, and parks to create compost systems to support soil health. He was exposed to soil health at an early age from the time he spent in his grandfather’s garden turning over rocks and logs to see the life that thrived underground, and how plants responded beautifully to growing in soil that was full of life. The seeds of LA Compost sprouted while he was working as a teacher. Excited to create more connections around food, soil, and community, he organized an after-school garden club to facilitate knowledge-sharing opportunities across campus, and was transformed by the ways in which his students engaged with food- and soil-related topics. The early days of LA Compost included picking up food scraps from juice bars, coffee shops, and taco shops, and composting this collected material in friends' and family members' backyards. LA Compost has supported over 50 community compost locations across the county, ensuring that both the soil and souls who engage with it are cared for. Michael cofounded the California Alliance for Community Composting, currently sits on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Composting Council and Food Exploration and Discovery, and was appointed by the Mayor of Los Angeles to become a Commissioner for the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office.

Ellah Ronen | Treasurer

As a social impact and sustainability professional, Ellah is adept at creating and managing strategic initiatives that leverage funding to create meaningful change for our most vulnerable residents. Prior to DoGoodery, Ellah was with the California Community Foundation, as Senior Program Officer, Public Policy & Strategic Partnerships, where she co-chaired the creation of the unprecedented Los Angeles County Food Equity Round Table – ratified by the LA County Board of Supervisors. Ellah also served as Strategic Liaison to the LA County Center for Strategic Partnerships and was a Managing Funder of the Nonprofit Sustainability Initiative. As a Program Officer at the Annenberg Foundation, she led LA n Sync, a coalition of changemakers united to attract government and private funding to LA County which has resulted in over $300M of investment to Los Angeles’ most underserved areas.

Ellah has a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of CA, Santa Barbara and an MBA from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Lindsay De May | Member

Lindsay De May is a UC Master Gardener who began gardening and farming while earning her bachelor's degree in Food Studies. She is passionate about the role community gardens can play in advancing food access, environmental justice, and community health. Lindsay has worked as a K-12 school garden educator, managed several gardens throughout Los Angeles, including a former restaurant garden at LACMA, and worked on farms throughout California.

Lindsay has also represented farmers as a trade association advocate. Lindsay is currently a plot holder at Good Earth Community Garden, where she manages communications. When not in the garden, Lindsay is a legal aid attorney assisting low-income patients with addressing social determinants of health, including disability rights, tenant's rights, consumer debt, public benefits, and healthcare access.

Qiana Montazeri | Member

Qiana works in grantmaking at Cedars-Sinai, where she supports organizations working to make Los Angeles healthier, more connected, and more equitable. Much of her current work focuses on food equity, urban agriculture, and building resilient communities.

Her path to has taken her through policy and health equity research, humanitarian response, and community health. Still, a common thread has always been a curiosity about how people, places, and systems shape our well-being. She considers herself a lifelong learner, but her formal studies include undergraduate studies in Political Science from the University of Utah and a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Qiana is especially interested in the ways LA’s community gardens bring people together, create opportunities for connection, and help people feel grounded in both identity and place. In her spare time, she can be found at the beach, at a museum, at a movie, reading, or making the perfect playlist—all of which are even better with her loved ones.

Emily Parker | Member

Emily Parker is the Executive Director of the Butterfly Equity Foundation, a corporate foundation committed to supporting food equity across Los Angeles County. Prior to joining the Foundation, Emily worked in grants management and operations at Fundamental, a Los Angeles-based philanthropic advising firm. She later served as Director of Development at Food Forward, raising awareness and resources to address hunger and reduce food waste across Southern California and beyond.

Emily also serves as Treasurer of the Board of Safe Place for Youth, is a member of the Sustainable Agriculture & Food Systems Funders Membership Committee, and is a co-founder and leader of LA Food Funders. As a lifelong gardener from a long line of gardeners, Emily is passionate about creating opportunities for Angelenos to experience the joy of growing food, connecting with their neighbors, and building an intentional community outdoors.

Omar Brownson | Executive Director

Omar Brownson is a bridge-builder between land and story, cultivating a gratitude ecosystem and regenerative economy rooted in nature and culture. As Executive Director of the Los Angeles Community Garden Council, he supports a network of 47 community gardens and over 2,000 members across the city.

Omar brings an entrepreneurial spirit to systemic challenges—whether reimagining urban infrastructure or sparking cultural transformation. His work has been featured by Simon Sinek, The Wall Street Journal, and Oprah.com.

He co-hosts the Gratitude Blooming Podcast, has led hundreds of gratitude circles, and previously co-founded a top-rated gratitude app featuring mindfulness leaders like Jack Kornfield and cultural icons like George Takei. Earlier, as the founding executive director of RiverLA, he partnered with architect Frank Gehry and local communities to revitalize the 51-mile Los Angeles River. His Greenway 2020 campaign secured $430 million in public investment and laid the groundwork for the visionary $10 million LA River Master Plan.

Omar also advises Full Spectrum Capital and the Ubuntu Climate Initiative and serves on the board of Commonweal, where the focus is on healing hearts and healing the planet. He holds a joint master’s degree from Harvard Kennedy School and the Graduate School of Design.

A poet and conceptual artist, Omar’s creative collaborations span Zen Master Norma Wong, MOCADA, and the Japanese American National Museum. No matter where he is, Omar takes time to notice beauty—and share joy.

Follow his mythical journey on Substack at Trickster's Guide to Immortality.

Preeti Kulkarni | Fractional Chief Financial Officer

Preeti Kulkarni is a leader in the non-profit community of Southern California and Fractional CFO. Preeti has spent the last fifteen years managing the finances and operations of several non-profit organizations and has been a key board member and consultant at community-based organizations such as the Los Angeles Community Garden Council, Liberty Hill Foundation, Center for the Pacific Asian Family, and the South Asian Network.

Jesse De La Cruz

Jesse founded Urbano Strategies, activated by social justice issues in his direct relation to his upbringing in the heavily urbanized area of South LA, which led him to earn his Bachelor's degree at the University of California, Irvine, in his endeavors to bring public service and support his community in the decades ahead. His public service includes work with the Los Angeles Community Garden Council, where he provides dedicated support to some of the Garden Council’s most complex sites and larger gardens, serving the monolingual Spanish-speaking communities.

Bliss Parsons

Bliss is an ecological garden designer, educator, and UC Master Gardener. A professional graphic designer by trade, Bliss worked as TreePeople’s senior graphic designer before making the leap to land-based work. She found her way into edible gardening through volunteering at the East Hollywood Community Garden, where she learned she could apply her creative problem-solving skills from graphic to garden design.

Through her own consulting business, Bliss designs, installs, and maintains specialty gardens for residential clients. She also teaches gardening at several high schools through a nonprofit that offers free arts programming to underserved communities across LA. She is passionate about getting people of all ages excited about growing food and learning about our incredible local flora here in Southern California.

Bliss earned her MFA in Graphic Design from Boston University’s School of Visual Arts, and her BA in Environmental Policy from Mount Holyoke College.