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. 301

email: leticia@lacocinasf.org

favorite foods: cochinita pibil, quiche and the per­fect brownie 

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