STORY
POWER
PLACE

she, her, ella | they, them

elle is a Queer Xicanx Indigenx who grew up in Chumash People’s land in santa barara, ca and is grateful to have found home in the high desert mountains in Tiwa People's Land in New Mexico. Tannia is proud to come from a migrant family of brave, persistent matriarchs, who have lived in the Tlayutla Valley in Central Mexico for generations.

Tannia is a storyteller, facilitator, doula, healing centered coach and creatrix of GiraSol Descendants, a beloved community making project, offering storytelling as a practice for building the world we need and deeply desire. Tannia offers a storytelling approach to facilitation, organizational vision, strategy and development, coaching and program design.

She has been growing alongside social justice movements for over 18 years working at the intersections of reproductive, gender and racial justice, and Queer liberation. Tannia previously served as the Executive Director at Bold Futures (formerly Young Women United), a New Mexico based reproductive justice organization led by BIPOC, where she made room for more people to strategize, shift power and narratives to ensure people in New Mexico can continue making real decisions about our own bodies and lives. She is happy to serve on the board at The Center for Whole Communities and The Astrea Foundation for Justice.

Tannia was shown the way of stories as a quiet, intuitive child who learned to listen and notice as safety keeping, grew to love offering and receiving stories through community based theater and as a student of Norma Wong, learned that the stories entrusted to all of us are the seeds we can nourish to make liberation possible in collaboration with our collective ancestors and descendants.

they/them

Pui-ling Lew is your friendly neighborhood stroller, sticking their head in jasmine, journeying through arbors, watching the oh-so mysterious crows, dreaming of our neighborhoods as public spaces for story, play, care, and community. Their engagement with food spans wide, from the complexities of food systems, to the depths of soil science, the nitty gritty of farming, and the cultural memories of Chinatown, cultivating a deeply diverse abundantly relational experience with food. Stewarded by and rooting in unceded Lisjan Ohlone land, they are finding their way towards wholeness and stitching themself into a movement of healing and transformation for collective liberation. Their main mediums of movement are found at the intersections of relationships, spirituality, story, wonder, culture, ecologies, cooking, and generative questioning, each with full-hearted engagement.

Pui-ling first joined Food Culture Collective as a participant in our story facilitation training, and later as member of the 2021 Facilitator Cohort. This training sowed the seeds for their own journey in cultural revitalization with their Chinese heritage, unraveling a diasporic identity inextricably tied to a search for belonging. As Co-Director at Food Culture Collective, they have facilitated a number of communities of practice on cultivating liberatory power as cultural stewards in foodshed communities. They are a part of 2024 Woman of Color LeadStrong Cohort, and a handful of AAPI healer communities.

Pui-ling is a student of many: Norma Wong, Jovida Ross, Afro- and indigenous- futurists, trees, water, and queer friendship, to name a few. Pui-ling is currently an apprentice of cats, trees, and water.

she/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.