Richard Jonasse, Ph.D.
Richard Jonasse's work for Food First has focused on International Financial Institutions, such as the World Bank and the WTO. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication from the University of California, San Diego; and a Masters in Telecommunication and Film from the University of Oregon.
Gretchen Gordon
Gretchen Gordon is a writer and consultant on Latin America, energy, and globalization. She has worked in economic justice advocacy in the U.S. and Latin America, and formerly directed the Washington, D.C. based Citizens Trade Campaign. She is currently a master’s candidate in Latin American Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and a fellow at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, based in Oakland, CA.
Brahm Ahmadi
Brahm Ahmadi was born is Tehran, Iran and grew up in Los Angeles, CA. He now lives in Oakland, CA. Brahm is co-founder and Executive Director of People’s Grocery, a nonprofit food justice organization based in the low-income community of West Oakland. Brahm has a B.A. in Sociology from the University of California and is an MBA candidate at the Presidio School of Management.
Saturnino (‘Jun’) M. Borras, Jr.
Jun Borras is a political activist who has been deeply involved with autonomous rural social movements in the Philippines and internationally since the early 1980s. He was also one of the founders of the international peasant movement La Via Campesina (today’s most important transnational rural social movement) and was member of its International Coordinating Commission (ICC) from 1993 to 1996. He has also provided advice, in varying extents and capacities, to a government ministry, multilateral and bilateral development institutions, and different donor agencies.
Jonathan Fox
Jonathan Fox, Ph.D.
Latin American and Latino Studies
University of California at Santa Cruz
Raj Patel
Raj Patel is no stranger to Food First, having been a Policy Analyst with the Institute from 2002 to 2004.
Catherine Murphy
Catherine Murphy grew up in San Francisco, California, and first went to Cuba in 1992 to conduct research on community gardens. This research eventually led to a Master's degree at the University of Havana, and her thesis, "Cultivating Havana", was published by Food First in 1998.
John Vandermeer, Ph.D.
University of Michigan, Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, College of Literature, Science, & the Arts
Academic Discipline: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Phone: (734) 764-1446
Email: jvander@umich.edu
· Studies the recovery of tropical rainforests from natural disasters such as hurricanes.
· Involved in projects assessing the ecological impact of agricultural practices, particularly various coffee growing methods
· Can discuss both scientific and sociopolitical aspects of rainforest destruction and conservation.
Ivette Perfecto, Ph.D.
Ivette Perfecto, Ph.D.
Professor of Natural Resources
Tropical Ecology, Agroecology, Trophic Level Interactions, Food Webs, Political Ecology, Environmental Justice, And Ecology
Dr. Perfecto is co-author of the Food First book Breakfast of Biodiversity
She is also the lead researcher of a meta-study comparing organic/sustainable agriculture to conventional industrial agriculture which was reported on in a 2007 Food First Backgrounder.
Office: 3541 Dana
(734) 764-1433
perfecto@umich.edu
Curriculum Vitae http://www.snre.umich.edu/people/cv/perfectocv.pdf
Catherine Badgely
University of Michigan
Catherine was the lead researcher for a 2007 report titled, Organic agriculture and the global food supply, Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, Vol. 22, Issue 2, pp. 86-108.