Board

Leigh Robbie Gaymon-Jones (she/her/hers) is an artist and facilitator committed to cultivating inspired relationships with the earth and between people.

Currently at Solidaire Network, Leigh works with social movements to foster long-term building of liberatory futures. Leigh’s work is informed by over a decade of experience connecting communities to land, food and sustainable life practices.  Her work at the intersection of food, education and identity for years, began in her hometown of Austin, Texas, where she led youth and community farm programming at Urban Roots. She has since managed Alemany Farm, a San-Francisco community project, directed the education team at CUESA (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), supported the launch of the Castanea Fellowship, for leaders in food equity, and guided the strategic redesign of UC Santa Cruz’s historic Apprenticeship in Ecological Horticulture. Leigh has also served as a program development consultant and facilitator with various food, arts and philanthropic organizations. Leigh is inspired by human connection and human capacity. She continues to vision and create projects at the crossroads of land, creativity, and wholeheartedness. During the Shelter in Place orders, Leigh has relished the time to spend at home in Santa Cruz, snuggled up with her partner and newly adopted pup—Willow Wind!  

 leighgaymonjones.com

(formerly with Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) University of California, Santa Cruz, now on CWC’s board and with Solidaire Network)

Samir K. Doshi, Ph.D. (he/him/his) was brought up as a Gandhian Jain and believes that selfless service is central to building and sustaining communities and relationships.

He is an organizer working on food justice and emergency food response in the Bay Area, as well as on land sovereignty issues nationally. Samir is also a Race and Technology Fellow at Stanford University in the Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society, where he is developing a program to design legal protections for farmworker communities in the rise of the multi-billion dollar AgTech field. Previously, Samir has worked for the World Wildlife Fund helping to design their international technology and innovation strategy. He also worked for the Obama Administration as a Senior Scientist and Deputy Division Chief for the USAID’s Global Development Lab, where he led programming on agile development, responsible data and disaster/emergency feedback systems so programming could be more responsive and adaptive to community needs on the ground.

Samir has held teaching and research appointments at the University of Cambridge, the Stockholm Resilience Centre, the Santa Fe Institute and as a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Prior to his academic career, Samir worked as an environmental engineer and humanitarian responder for local organizations and indigenous communities around the world in dozens of countries on six continents. He has also worked and facilitated extensively on issues of racial, gender and intersectional justice for communities pushing for a Just Transition. 

Josh Carrera (he/him) is a born and raised New Yorker with family roots in Ecuador.

He left NYC in 2008 to study natural resources planning and economics in Vermont and throughout Latin America. After college, Josh returned to NYC and joined the Mayday Collective, an activist and community organizing hub in Brooklyn, New York. In 2019, Josh joined the Mayday staff as project coordinator to oversee volunteer management, class bookings, and cultural programming. He has worked hard to activate the space with events that infuse political education into fun programming such as film nights, book clubs, and dance classes. In his free time, Josh likes to ride his bike and blast Latin freestyle from his portable speakers. He also enjoys reading groups on science fiction and political theory. Josh has previously worked for the Center for Whole Communities and The Nature Conservancy. 

Patrick Brown (he/they) is a strategist, advocate, coach, and facilitator focused on organizational transformation.

Through a national network of partnerships, he has created a body of work that includes executive coaching, transformative leadership development, systems change strategy mapping, and more. Patrick’s approach is full-hearted and joyful rooted in healing through rigorous individual work. As a queer Black man moving through the world he often draws from his own experiences influenced by teachings of the Buddha and Dharma, Black Feminist Theory, Somatic experience, and ancient wisdom philosophies.

Patrick was born into a lineage of union and faith-based organizers on the south side of Chicago. His background in workforce development focused on creating opportunities for marginalized communities including women in non-traditional sectors, formerly incarcerated, poor, and communities of color. He left that work for Oakland to better understand the process of transformation. Since arriving in 2011, Patrick has had the fortune to work with powerful partners to create change. They include but are not limited to: the California Congressional Black Caucus, PolicyLink, Museum of African Diaspora, Whole Foods, The United Way Worldwide, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Leadership Learning Community, People’s Institute for Undoing Racism, The Greenlining Institute, East Side Arts Alliance, The California Endowment, Urban Habitat, Othering and Belonging conference and more.

Patrick currently leads work with The Justice Collective that deepens and expands racial equity through leadership and organizational development. With a deep commitment to mindfulness and embodiment practices, he believes we can change the world by transforming ourselves.

With more than 20 years of experience in popular education and transformative facilitation, Rosa (she/her/ella) is dedicated to a thriving culture of participation where communities come together to solve social, environmental, and economic challenges.

Through her project, Facilitating Power, she has partnered with dozens of organizations, agencies, and community leaders to develop participatory approaches to building community resilience and grassroots power. She wrote the Framework on Community-Driven Climate Resilience Planning, and the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership, in collaboration with climate justice leaders from around the country, and is working to deepen collaboration between the public and private sectors at the local level through multiple city-based initiatives.  She has designed and directed programs for Movement Strategy Center, The Building Healthy Communities Initiative, The Action Council of Monterey County, The Alliance for Climate Education, Green For All, and the Partnership for Immigrant Leadership and Action, and spent ten years as a middle school teacher in San José and East Oakland.

Rosa has a gift for accessing the core values at the heart of any effort and weaving shared narratives to advance big vision and concrete practices. She is also a visual and performing artist and student of Vedic wisdom and Maya-Tolteca philosophy, committed to the lessons of our ancestors — to bring balance — with all our relations.