Co-Director of Creative Play
ada@foodculture.org
she/her/ella

Ada is dedicated to cultivating moments and spaces for exploration, celebration, and deep connection that nourish us, and open us up to new possibilities—especially around food and community. Growing up in a diasporic, military Puerto Rican family that was constantly uprooted, Ada’s relationship with food is centered around building home and identity.

Before joining Food Culture Collective, Ada spent 7+ years working in design and marketing roles at small-scale organic and sustainable farms—including a human-grade insect farm—as well as in natural snack brand start-ups based in the Bay Area. Previously she had worked as a food tour guide in Washington DC, an in-house graphic designer, and a conference manager for a finance-focused organization.

In her role as Co-Director of Creative Play, Ada designs and manages digital spaces that encourage connection, exploration, and reflection through storytelling and participation within and beyond our place-based food communities. Ada believes that everyone has a creative, inquisitive sense of play that needs to be fed and unleashed regularly so that we can build the irresistible food future we all want. 


Transformative food memory: Making alcapurrias—meat-filled fritters made with a masa of tropical tubers and green plantains—with my mom, grandma, and aunts for Christmas in Puerto Rico, using plantains, yucca, and yautías that my uncle harvested from his tropical forest garden.

Co-Director of Purpose & Practice
pui-ling@foodculture.org
Pronouns: they/them

Pui-Ling is a queer child of the Chinese diaspora, finding their way home through food. What began as a study of food systems in college, has blossomed into a deeply nourishing and healing array of experiential studies of ecological, emotional, and cultural landscapes—diversified farmland and farmers markets, to streets of Chinatown, reweaving relationships to land, community, culture, and self, along the way.

Pui-Ling first joined Food Culture Collective as a participant in our story facilitation training, and later as a member of the 2021 Facilitator Cohort. The experience had a profound impact on their ability to find their voice and name their truths around being a Chinese-American, which inspired Pui-Ling to join the FC Collective team. Pui-Ling continues to unearth their cultural foodways through relationships.

As Co-Director of Purpose and Practice, they are in a curiosity- and wonder-led inquiry and practice of emergent strategy. Their full-hearted engagement, passion, and practice is expressed in their work to deepen and grow relationships within the Food Culture Collective community and beyond. Pui-Ling’s dynamic experiences with food, natural inquisitiveness, attention to detail, and unabashedly warm and generous presence help to ensure all FC Collective programs run smoothly and support collective healing and transformation for all participants, in authentic and meaningful ways.

Pui-Ling is currently based on unceded Ohlone land, in Oakland, CA, just minutes away from Chinatown, home to precious memories of morning brunch with Pao Pao, their grandmother.

Co-Director of Collective Governance
jovida@foodculture.org
she or they

Food has been a guiding force in Jovida’s life, since her early years on her family’s organic micro-farm in Coast Miwok lands of rural Northern California. While her previous work spans efforts to generate community-based solutions to violence, queer liberation, reproductive justice, and ecologically-responsive and just economies, the throughline remains a deep belief that together, with commitment and intention, we can reorganize our world to support our mutual thriving. Jovida sees food as central to this vision and brings more than two decades of experience generating collective strategies that bring ambitious visions to fruition.

Before joining the Food Culture Collective team, Jovida spent 7+ years as Director of Programs at Movement Strategy Center (MSC), where she co-founded The Transitions Initiative and led the design and facilitation of MSC’s Transitions Labs. These BIPOC-centered cross-movement learning and strategy spaces gathered more than 200 social justice movement leaders from across the country to explore the question: How do we transition our world from domination and extraction to resilience, regeneration, and interdependence? With Jovida’s leadership, FC Collective has come to clearly situate our work within a movement-building context, understanding that we work in concert with others whose visions align with ours.

Many teachers and communities of practice have supported Jovida’s learning around embodiment practices, trauma stewardship and healing, and how personal and collective transformation are linked. She is particularly grateful for the guidance and mentorship of Kawelokū Norma Wong.

Transformative Food Memory: Facilitating a bilingual strategy session for the Food Chain Workers Alliance membership meeting, feeling the energy and power of nearly a hundred workers and worker-organizers who were deeply committed to a transformative vision for food that benefits all––and ready to mobilize towards that vision.