Leticia Landa, La Cocina

Leticia Landa is the Executive Director at La Cocina, a nonprofit that supports immigrant and women entrepreneurs gain financial security through building food businesses and creating an innovative, vibrant and inclusive economic landscape. Passionate about food and the daughter of Mexican immigrant small business owners, Leticia has worn many hats in her 12+ years at La Cocina: working directly with business owners, developing the incubator program, writing grants, managing volunteers, consulting with other incubators, and now guiding vision and strategy for the organization's tremendous growth.

Javier Cruz, Cruz Martinez Farm

As a child, Javier Cruz helped his parents — Teodora and Melecio Cruz — in the fields, before pursuing a career in technology as Teodora and Melecio started their own farm business, Cruz Martinez Farm. While their agricultural wisdom led to thriving production, the two experienced challenges in running the business-side of the operation. In 2016, Javier took an active role in the farm to support his parents in building a livelihood for their family.

Javier, Teodora, and Melecio joined KTA as clients in 2017. With KTA’s support, they have been able to purchase the land they farm in Madera, setting a stable course for the future.

Esperanza Pallana, Wildseeds Fund

Esperanza Pallana was raised in California where she spent her childhood in the Bay Area, the Central Valley, and the Tuolumne mountains. She is an Indigenous descendant of the Caxcan of the Nahua Nation of Northern Mexico and Southwest U.S. She has worked with nonprofits for over 20 years with an emphasis in leadership, systemic change, and policy advocacy. Her priority is to use the power of movement-led investments, cultural organizing, and storytelling to strengthen the network of land-based practitioners who are fostering political leadership and community economic power through the lens of ancestral ecological practice. As Executive Director of Wildseeds Fund, a movement-led participatory grantmaker, Esperanza is committed to community-controlled capital structures, narrative shift, and emboldening transformative food and agricultural systems change.

Nicole Mason, Veritable Vegetable

Nicole Mason is the Director of Marketing and Community Engagement at Veritable Vegetable (VV), a women-owned and led business in San Francisco that is the oldest organic produce distribution company west of the Mississippi. She has more than 15 years of experience in sustainable food and ag working at VV, Roots of Change and California Environment Associates as well as serving on boards and advisory committees of Ag Innovations Network and the SF Food Industry Cluster. She is a bridge builder between farmers and distributors, business and nonprofits and government, and on-the-ground work and policy.

Marni Rosen, Colibri

Marni Rosen is a principal and philanthropy advisor at Colibri, bridging philanthropic individuals and families with grassroots and on-the-ground leaders pointing towards environmental, economic, and social justice. She brings 17 years of experience leading the Jennifer Altman Foundation, board service with Environmental Grantmakers Association and Health and Environmental Funders Network, and participation in the California Foodshed Funders group.

Marni balances a heart-centered, pragmatic, movement-led, and strategic approach to her work.

Bertha Magaña, Magaña Farm

Bertha Magaña spent years working as a farmworker after immigrating to the U.S. from Mexico before she decided to begin her own farm business. Her dream was to build a farm that could provide a livelihood for her family, and where she could work alongside her husband, Heriberto, and their three children. Bertha’s experience as a farmworker further inspired her passion for sustainable agriculture, shaping her interest in production practices -- water conservation as well as planting hedgerow varieties to attract pollinators and other beneficial insects -- that would be just as kind to the planet as to her family.

Bertha joined KTA as a client in 2016. Her goal upon joining the advising program was to achieve her family’s dream of owning farmland. In 2017, Magaña Farm purchased the nine acres in Aromas where they grow mixed vegetables and berries.