Caleb began work­ing in kitchens in his home­town of Wash­ing­ton, DC (Ruppert’s Restau­rant, his all-time favorite) and has been work­ing with the food indus­try ever since. While attend­ing the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, Caleb worked week­ends as a butcher and nights as a waiter, ulti­mately mov­ing into front of the house man­age­ment. With a degree in glob­al­iza­tion, Caleb interned at Pro­Mu­jer, in El Alto, Bolivia, work­ing with microen­tr­peneurs in the country’s fastest grow­ing city.

As Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions at La Cocina, and with the orga­ni­za­tion since it opened in 2005, Caleb is respon­si­ble for man­ag­ing all pro­gram­ming. Caleb is flu­ent in Span­ish, a trained diver­sity leader, Cal­i­for­nia Food Safety Man­ager and HACCP cer­ti­fied. He brings a pas­sion for food and a belief that every cook should have an oppor­tu­nity to earn a liv­ing doing what they love to do.

con­tact: (415) 824‑2729, ext. 303

email: caleb@lacocinasf.org

favorite foods: chicken soup, steamed pork buns, mol­letes and nearly any­thing with miso.

Leti­cia works with all pro­gram par­tic­i­pants by pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal assis­tance through monthly goal plan­ning meet­ings and con­nect­ing them with ser­vice providers in the com­mu­nity. Leti­cia also works to keep La Cocina’s vol­un­teers hard at work and helps with other projects includ­ing spe­cial events and classes, cor­po­rate gifts, donor out­reach, and the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market.

She holds a bach­e­lors degree from Har­vard Uni­ver­sity and com­pleted the first year of culi­nary train­ing at the Cor­don Bleu in Paris and worked on the line at Jeffrey’s Restau­rant in Austin, Texas where she grew up. Leticia’s back­ground is mostly in inter­na­tional non­profit work–she has lived in rural North­ern India and rural South­west­ern China work­ing and study­ing agri­cul­tural poverty and its effects on women. She also worked at Wit­ness in Brook­lyn, New York, research­ing and devel­op­ing doc­u­men­taries about human rights abuses in Latin Amer­ica and along the US-Mexico border.

Leti­cia is flu­ent in Span­ish and French and is con­ver­sant in Man­darin. Leti­cia brings a pas­sion for the kitchen to La Cocina and a true belief in the effect of empow­er­ment for women busi­ness owners.

con­tact: (415) 824‑2729, ext. 303

email: leticia@lacocinasf.org

favorite foods: cochinita pibil, quiche and the per­fect brownie

Marisa is a Bay Area native from Berke­ley, CA. She grad­u­ated from Pomona Col­lege in 2006 with a B.A. in Soci­ol­ogy and Span­ish Lit­er­a­ture. After grad­u­at­ing, Marisa headed off to Gua­na­ju­ato, Méx­ico to work at Cen­tro Las Libres, a women’s rights non-governmental orga­ni­za­tion. In 2007 she returned home to the Bay and worked as a para­le­gal on prisoner’s rights class action law­suits. In Sep­tem­ber 2008, Marisa once again moved abroad, but this time on a Ful­bright Grant to Madrid, Spain. In Madrid she researched Latina immi­grant domes­tic work­ers’ expe­ri­ences and worked with SEDOAC, an asso­ci­a­tion of immi­grant domes­tic work­ers. As La Cocina’s Devel­op­ment Offi­cer, Marisa over­sees all grant writ­ing and devel­op­ment tasks. Marisa is sad to soon be leav­ing La Cocina in mid-July, but is also look­ing for­ward to start­ing Stan­ford Law School in the fall!

con­tact:(415) 824‑2729, ext. 304

email: marisa@lacocinasf.org

Favorite foods — Too many to decide, but first and fore­most, the amaz­ing dishes cre­ated by her father.

Matt over­sees the kitchen to ensure that the pro­gram par­tic­i­pants are work­ing in opti­mum con­di­tions. With exten­sive expe­ri­ence as a chef, gen­eral man­ager and restau­rant owner, he pro­vides kitchen guid­ance and tech­ni­cal assis­tance to La Cocina’s many busi­nesses and com­mer­cial users alike. Matt also works with La Cocina’s cater­ers to fine tune their oper­a­tions. He helps guide our culi­nary cur­ricu­lum and makes sure that every­thing is work­ing prop­erly in our spa­cious com­mer­cial kitchen.

After receiv­ing degrees from UC Davis and the Cal­i­for­nia Culi­nary Acad­emy, Matt spent time work­ing his way up the cook­ing ranks at Miss Pearls Jam House and Silks before spend­ing five years at Camp­ton Place Hotel. Next stop was Col­orado, where he was exec­u­tive chef and gen­eral man­ager of an award win­ning South­west­ern restau­rant. Miss­ing his native San Fran­cisco, he returned home to become a part­ner in Ella’s Restau­rant and Blue Fog Mar­ket, arti­san cor­ner stores which carry prod­ucts from some of La Cocina’s busi­nesses. Matt is also a part­ner in a street food busi­ness in Guadala­jara, Mex­ico and is pas­sion­ate about for­mal­iz­ing street food busi­nesses in San Francisco.

Matt is almost flu­ent in Span­ish and loves work­ing with entre­pre­neurs with a pas­sion for turn­ing their love of food into suc­cess­ful businesses.

con­tact: (415) 824‑2729 x. 302

email: matt@lacocinasf.org

favorite foods: tacos al pas­tor, sushi, caramel with sea salt and any­thing with BACON

Julie has the longest title ever. This is because she man­ages all of La Cocina’s retail sales, gift bas­kets, and the booth at the Ferry Plaza Farm­ers’ Mar­ket and the annual gift fair. Julie is also respon­si­ble for La Cocina’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions, our web­site, newslet­ters, and pro­mo­tional mate­ri­als. Lastly (and most impor­tantly) Julie works with all pro­gram par­tic­i­pants to help them grow and launch their food businesses.

Julie Flynn grew up near Hart­ford, Con­necti­cut. She attended Brown Uni­ver­sity and con­cen­trated in both Urban Stud­ies and Visual Art. After grad­u­at­ing in 2008, she drove across the coun­try to even­tu­ally set­tle in Los Angele. Dur­ing her time in LA, Julie worked at Hal’s Bar and Grill in Venice Beach and in the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Depart­ment of the Los Ange­les Regional Foodbank.

Julie is par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in urban sus­tain­abil­ity and stud­ied green roofs, urban farm­ing, and com­mu­nity gar­dens at Brown. Her work at the Food­bank led her to fur­ther explore the issues sur­round­ing the Amer­i­can food sys­tem. In the sum­mer of 2008, Julie launched a blog to explore the chal­lenges low-income Amer­i­cans face in main­tain­ing a health­ful and sus­tain­able diet. The site chron­i­cles her expe­ri­ence liv­ing on $31 per week as a vegan and also ignites dis­cus­sion about the cul­ture and busi­ness of food in Amer­ica. Check that project out at: http://onfoodstamps.blogspot.com/

Julie is also an avid cook and artist. In the kitchen, she likes to use fresh local pro­duce to cre­ate eclec­tic veg­e­tar­ian dishes. Since mov­ing to Cal­i­for­nia, she has increas­ingly exper­i­mented with Mex­i­can cui­sine. Yum!

con­tact:(415) 824‑2729, ext. 302

email: julie@lacocinasf.org

Favorite foods — grilled veg­eta­bles (espe­cially corn on the cob), hum­mus, and dried peaches with peanut butter.

China spent her child­hood in the moun­tains of West­ern North Car­olina eat­ing brown rice, nori, and ume­boshi and home­school­ing in the small nat­ural foods store where her mother worked. As if that wasn’t campy enough, her sum­mers were spent at the Hur­ri­cane Island Out­ward Bound School in Maine where her father worked as a chef, mak­ing fresh milled whole grain flour bread daily and teach­ing the ben­e­fits of whole foods to the Out­ward Bound students.

China moved to CA as a teenager and has worked in health food stores and var­i­ous restau­rants from Sonoma to Seat­tle to Idaho and now back to SF where she cur­rently runs the Farmer’s Mar­ket booth for La Cocina at the Sat­ur­day Ferry Plaza Mar­ket. She also works for Parisa Teas, a  chai com­pany, as a brew mas­ter and bot­tle washer extraordinaire.

She is cur­rently attend­ing City Col­lege of San Fran­cisco study­ing film pho­tog­ra­phy and is pur­su­ing her life long love of mak­ing music in her spare time. China is over­joyed to be a part of La Cocina where she is daily inspired by the ded­i­ca­tion and cre­ativ­ity of the peo­ple who run their busi­nesses there, as well as work­ing at the mar­ket and being part of the local and sus­tain­able food movement.

Favorite foods: almost any­thing pick­led, col­lared greens, fried okra

email: china@lacocinasf.org