Board of Directors

Leah is very proud to be on the board of Planting Justice. She was born and raised in the Bay Area. Spending most of her life in Oakland, she is excited to see an organization like Planting Justice revitalizing our shared spaces and reimagining the way we grow and eat food. She believes there are many ways to fight for justice, planting food being one of them. She will be attending University of California, Hastings College of the Law in the fall and she hopes to use the law to fight for a more just and transparent criminal justice system.  

Claudia lived the first half of her life in Mexico City, a metropolis she has a love-hate relationship with for being an intense urban experience. Yet growing up there, Sundays meant an obligatory trip to the mercado to stock on fresh fruit and vegetables and she thanks her mom and her culture for that! After college she worked with inner-city “at-risk” youth in Richmond and in Oakland. During her 2-year grad school stint in the East Coast she felt very homesick for California and realized it was now home after a decade of living there and of yearning for Mexico. Upon graduation she quickly made her way back to Cali to work for an environmental justice organization in the areas of transportation justice, affordable housing, and equitable development. She now works in San Francisco as an urban planner promoting an equity and public benefits planning lens in all her work as well as working on policy that promotes sustainability and smart growth. Claudia sees her involvement in Planting Justice as an extension of her values and her commitment to social justice, local economic development, sustainability and peace. She loves dancing, has written poetry, collaborated on a couple of murals, and is learning to play the guitar.

Lil Milagro Martinez-Cornejo is a writer, activist, spoken word poetess, Mexicha/Aztec dancer and aspiring scholar. She has worked in multiple movements since 2000 including but not limited to movements around empowering and increasing access to higher education for students of color, spreading the word about the femicides in Juarez, advocating for economic justice as part of the labor movement in Justice for Janitors and struggling to think land reform and issues of food sustainability with Indigenous communities in El Salvador. She received her Bachelors in Women’s Studies, Political Science with a minor in Ethnic Studies from the University of Colorado at Boulder. She is currently in her second year at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the Social and Cultural Anthropology department with an emphasis on gender, ecology and society. Dreaming of different relationships that particularly low-income communities of color can have to food, she wants to help think access, health, power and resistance as daily practices. She hopes one day to raise her own chickens, grow her own food and, if she’s really lucky, raise a goat. Currently living in San Francisco, she can’t wait to return to the East Bay with her partner and her beautiful dog Kali.

Ashley Philpot grew up in Ohio, and has dedicated her life to social and environmental justice. She has a Masters degree in Postcolonial Anthropology from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, and a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology from Miami University of Ohio. After completing her Bachelors, she worked in Atlanta and San Francisco as a Canvass Director, mobilizing hundreds to stop oil drilling on our coasts, build support for sustainable energy systems, and advocate for LGBTQ rights. Ashley is currently in her first year of Doctoral work in Postcolonial Anthropology. Her research and advocacy is interested in addressing the structures of violence produced through capitalist exploitation and U.S. militarization in Iraq, and their effects upon gender and sexual minorities in the Middle East.

Rony is a long-time resident of Berkeley, CA. He is married and has three grown children. For more than 30 years he worked in major biotechnology corporations as a research scientist specializing in molecular biological investigation of bacterial, fungal and plant systems and also in development of human diagnostics and therapeutics. In the last four years he dedicated his time to volunteering and working for social justice and communitarian causes in the Bay Area.

While still working in research he returned to school in 2003 to obtain an M.B.A. and worked for a while in biotech business development. His educational and work experiences in corporate America prepared him for social activism because they allowed him a deeper understanding of the workings of capitalism, American style. He was not at all surprised to witness the predictably near collapse of the American financial system last year.

Working to end our militaristic approach to solving the world’s problems, he joined Peace Action West, of Oakland in mid-2006. This is where he met Haleh and Gavin and where he gained some experience as an organizer.

He believes there is a real need to bring change to America after eight long, suffering years of the Bush Regime. His background as a biologist and activist and his roots growing up in a communal farming environment in Israel could be useful in supporting Planting Justice. Now he sees that in all those years, working with the land, raising chicken, rabbits, goats, cows and sheep and providing food for the community formed the foundation for his strong belief in returning to peaceful naturalism as a way of life, especially in urban areas. He senses that there is a great thirst for finding a way to cultivate a more just social order. Naturally, his personal history compels him to contribute to Planting Justice’s social agenda and to participate in making its vision a reality.

Leah currently serves as program manager for Multinational Exchange for Sustainable Agriculture (MESA), a non-profit organization facilitating an international farmer-to-farmer exchange program on behalf of sustainable agriculture. Leah grew up on a family-scale non-production farm in the redwood forests of Arcata, Ca. and has lived in the Bay Area for the last 10 years where she moved to pursue a degree in Environmental Policy and Spanish at UC Berkeley. She has spent much time abroad in South and Central America as well as in Bangladesh working on behalf of social, environmental and food justice initiatives. As a result of her travel and work experiences she gained insight into international agriculture systems and the value of socio-ecologically mindful practices and unconventional multi-stakeholder collaboration. Leah’s past non-profit experience includes working in program development for the International Institute for Bengal Basin to address water rights and pollution mitigation in Bangladesh, India and Nepal and with East Bay Sanctuary Covenant where she worked in translation and fundraising on behalf of indigent refugees seeking legal guidance. Her latest project is launching Ag-vocate.org- a web portal to promote civic philanthropy in the direction of local small-scale agriculture. In her surplus time she teaches yoga to at-risk teens with the Art of Yoga Project and is trained in facilitation and conflict mediation.

Josh Sbicca has been working as an activist and a scholar since 2001. He graduated from Santa Clara University with a BS in Sociology and Political Science, but during those years and the two years after graduation he worked on everything from anti-war and labor struggles, to environmental issues. He is currently working as a graduate student in Sociology at the University of Florida. As a participatory researcher, he gradually has been learning from communities in both Florida and California how they are pro-actively creating sustainable urban environments that directly challenge status quo models of social organization, economics and urban planning. He believes that communities have a right to self determination regarding decisions that directly impact their ability to live in an increasingly polluted and unhealthy world. The political framing of food justice by those in the alternative food and farming movement carves out rhetorical and lived spaces for communities and organizations to build alliances across ideological, racial and economic boundaries. Therefore, it is Josh's hope that by balancing both academics and activism, he can more fully actualize the vision he has for this world - a vision that at core is prioritizing solidarity, justice, diversity, and sustainability.

Dani ‘Dascrybe’ Martinez-Cornejo is an activist, educator, student, emcee, producer, and musical director. He has been a music practitioner for over 12 years representing Denver's Debajo del Agua (www.myspace.com/debajodelagua; www.debajodelagua.com) crew. Currently residing in the Bay Area and working with youth in East Oakland, going to school and making music, he seeks to use music, educational justice and politics to come together to push for social justice. Dani Dascrybe has shared the stage with Talib Kweli, J Live, Los Super Reyes de Cumbia, Savage Family, Rebel Diaz, Life Crew, The Flobots, and others. Activism in the Community remains at the forefront of his life’s mission using music as a tool for education and empowerment. He has performed for multiple rallies including immigrant rights rallies, AIM rallies, transform Columbus day rallies, educational equity rallies and anti-war demonstrations. He has participated in many musical projects including the 2000 Universal Language, 2006 Arte-Sano, and 2008 El Mundo Invertido.

Wiley is an activist, plant raiser, beekeeper and avid windsurfer. He graduated from Colorado College with a self-designed degree in Ecological Economics. In 2008, he authored an in-depth report on housing affordability in the Rocky Mountain West that was published in the State of the Rockies Report. Recognizing the strengths of the academic world, but longing for more tangible skills, Wiley moved to Oakland California and worked for City Slicker Farms in West Oakland. Establishing a rooftop nursery in Emeryville, Wiley was able to sell wholesale vegetable flats and donate vegetable starts to Oakland backyard gardeners. During the 2008 presidential election, Wiley served as a Deputy Field Organizer for the Obama Campaign in Colorado Springs. Wiley maintains five bee hives and has plans to expand his honey operation in Oakland. He enjoys playing with drum machines and performing with Gamelan Sekar Jaya (a Balinese gamelan orchestra). Wiley feels most alive when he is traveling 40 miles per hour across the waves on a windsurf board.