John Bela, Victory Gardens Program Manager
Victory Garden Team
John's background is in art, science, and environmental design. He studied drawing, performance, and sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Plant Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Massachusetts; and Landscape Architecture & Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. John works with SF Victory Gardens 08+ to coordinate the backyard garden program and is designing the Civic Center Victory Garden. He also works as a landscape designer with Conger Moss Guillard Landscape Architecture (CMG), and directs Rebar, an active open-source art collective. John's family owns and operates a small biodynamic farm in rural Kentucky that produces an abundance and diversity of fruits, vegetables, dairy, and meat for the farm's CSA shareholders.
www.cmgsite.com
www.rebargroup.org
www.hillandhollowfarm.com
Brooke Budner, Victory Gardens Backyard Garden Manager
Victory Garden Team
Brooke Budner is an artist and urban food gardener. She was trained as a painter at the Rhode Island School of Design, as a farmer on organic farms on the east coast , and as a cheesemaker in Italy. She spent one year at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center studying bio-intensive gardening and permaculture design. She is passionate about building community, creating sustainable food systems and translating aspects of rural homesteading to life in the city. She currently cultivates a formerly vacant lot in the mission. In addition to working with the Victory Garden team, Brooke is the garden instructor with The Colima Project in El Salvador, where each summer she leads San Francisco State University students and town members in a collaborative garden build.
Amy Franchescini, Founder, Victory Gardens 2008+
Victory Garden Team
Amy Franceschini’s art practice questions and challenges social, cultural and environmental systems through interdisciplinary and collaborative practices manifested "on" and "offline" in the form of dynamic websites, installations, open-access laboratories, and educational platforms that encourage new formats for engagement and production. Often taking form as long-term engagements with the public, Amy's projects interrogate the politics of space and ways that globalization affects the natural and built environment. The images of growth pervading her work invoke an appreciation for finite resources and function as a metaphor to value and nurture our own creative resources. Amy founded Futurefarmers in 1995, and Free Soil in 2004. Her solo and collaborative work have been included in exhibitions internationally including ZKM, Whitney Museum, NYMOMA and SFMOMA. She is the recipient of the Artadia Award, Eureka Fellowship and SFMOMA SECA. BFA, San Francisco State University; MFA, Stanford University.
www.futurefarmers.com
Lael Gerhart, Volunteer Coordinator, Civic Center Victory Gardens Project
Civic Center Victory Garden Team
Lael Gerhart was born on a small dairy farm in Newfield, NY and grew up along side her family's yogurt business. Lael holds a BFA in photography from New York University and a MS in Adult and Extension Education from Cornell University where she focused on community-based food systems. She has worked on small-scale fruit and vegetable farms and as a research technician for sustainable sweet corn production. Previous to relocating to the Bay Area, she spent three years working with Cornell Cooperative Extension where she initiated and provided leadership for the Tompkins County Buy Local Campaign and the Healthy Food For All program which connects low-income community members to subsidized CSA shares and free cooking and nutrition classes. Lael loves to garden, cook, and is very excited about joining the Bay Area sustainable foods community.
Matt Gonzalez, Collaborator/ Liaison
Collaborator
Matt Gonzalez graduated from Columbia College in New York City in 1987 where he studied Political Theory and Comparative Literature. In 1990 he received his J.D. from Stanford Law School where he a member of the Stanford Environmental Law Journal. In 2000, Gonzalez became the first member of the Green Party to win elective office in San Francisco. He was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, representing District 5, which includes the Haight, Western Addition, and Inner Sunset neighborhoods. Gonzalez is also a strong supporter of the arts and hosted a monthly art opening in his office at City Hall. Matt is an important part of this collaborative constellation, as he understands the role of the artist as cultural worker and the importance of art and civic engagement and he will serve as the liaison with city agencies and development of VG2007+. www.gonzalezleigh.com
www.mattgonzalez.com
Suzi Palladino, Victory Gardens Educator & Coordinator
Victory Garden Team
Suzi Palladino made her way from small-town North Carolina into the city lights of San Francisco in January of 2005. After spending several months traveling and working on organic farms in New Zealand, Suzi landed in SF in January 2005 ready to plunge into the urban sustainable agriculture movement of the Bay Area. She has a long history of working with youth and has a deep-rooted passion for ecological sustainability, environmental stewardship and food justice activism. Prior to the GFE, Suzi spent her days as an Environmental Educator for a local public elementary school as well as a Garden Educator for the Koshland Park Community Learning Garden of the Hayes Valley/Western Addition. Since the Summer of 2006, she has been managing the school programs at the Garden for the Environment. Suzi helps maintain the garden, manages the Compost Education Center and teaches urban sustainable agriculture classes including the Gardening and Composting Educator Training Program.
Blair Randall, Victory Gardens Program Director
Victory Garden Team
Blair is Director of the Victory Garden program and Garden Education Program Manager at Garden for the Environment, San Francisco’s Organic Demonstration Garden. Blair is a passionate educator of organic gardening and has taught in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past seven years. Blair is a graduate of the Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture at The Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Gardening and Composting Educator Training Program, which he now teaches. Prior to his work in the Sustainable Food Movement, Blair served as a Co-Director of Pond Gallery, a Non-Profit art gallery in San Francisco’s Mission District and graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz with honors in Fine Art.
Kelsey Siegel, Victory Garden Educator, Civic Center Victory Garden Project
Civic Center Victory Garden Team
From 1998-2007, Kelsey Siegel worked as the Garden Manager and Teacher at The Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley, CA. During his time there, he was able to combine his passions for working with youth and growing good food. After graduating from Oberlin College in 1994 with a B.A. in Environmental Studies, he pursued his interests in music, food, teaching, and sustainable agriculture in a variety of settings. Whether growing vegetables and herbs on the Ayrshire Farm in North Carolina, teaching pre-school at Pacific Primary in San Francisco, cooking at several Bay Area restaurants, or teaching drumming to inner city youth in San Francisco’s Mission District, Kelsey brings an intense commitment to sustaining the environment and helping young people grow and realize their full potential.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Kelsey takes special pride in supporting young people in the communities he grew up in, and is very excited about “digging in” his native soil with SF Victory Gardens. Complimenting his work with youth and gardening, Kelsey currently serves on the Board of Directors of Loco Bloco, a performing arts program in San Francisco that provides children, teens, and young adults with a hands on introduction to musical, dance, and theater traditions of the Americas. When he is not tending to a garden, Kelsey enjoys surfing, cooking, playing Brazilian percussion, and learning about parenthood with his new son Caio.
Geoff Morris, Web Tender
Collaborator
In 2006, Geoff graduated from Stanford University after completing his undergraduate and master's degrees in Symbolic Systems. His research explored new modes of human/computer interaction, focusing on computer music and cognitive applications of virtual reality.
Since then, he has been working as a design consultant, web developer, and project manager for Futurefarmers, Yahoo, and other online entities.
Geoff currently teaches Digital Literacy at the University of San Francisco.
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