Meet the Board

Amanda hails from lower latitudes such as California, Texas, and Costa Rica, but has been in Corvallis for the last 9 years. She is the STEM Teacher at Linus Pauling Middle School and has been working in education for the last 15 years. Her interest in learning about and then joining the TRFW Board comes from her passion in non-traditional education and hands-on experiences for all. She is interested in guiding the youth towards more exposure in agricultural sciences and helping them get their hands dirty while expanding their experiences and knowledge for the area in their own backyards. As a member of the board, Amanda hopes to further ingrain herself in the Ten Rivers community and she looks forward to learning more about her local food web and her role in it. Outside of teaching and learning, Amanda loves to get her hands dirty with her small boys in their backyard, enjoys family bike rides, and dreaming about a future urban homestead with her husband. 

Diego Nieto is the Healthy Communities Coordinator for the Linn County Health Department, where he works to strengthen local food systems and access across the county. He came to food systems work through a deep love for cooking delicious food, having grown up in a Spanish-Italian family that loves to eat, and working in restaurant kitchens for nearly 10 years. He has participated in several urban farming and mutual aid projects in Chicago and Corvallis, including Growing Ancestral Roots and Stop the Sweeps. Diego sees regenerative food production and community-centered distribution as integral to creating an equitable society, stewarding our land and water, and combating the alienation and isolation that capitalism engenders. In his time away from work and organizing, Diego enjoys making pottery, learning buddhist philosophy, and playing basketball.

Gabrielle Roesch-McNally has a PhD in sociology and sustainable agriculture and has been working in food systems and agriculture for 20+ years. In her day job, she directs the Women for the Land program at American Farmland Trust. Much of her work is at the intersection of climate, social change, and equity. She lives in Albany with her family and on a small suburban homestead. She loves local food, from growing, to cooking, to preserving and sharing. 

Olivia is a current graduate student in Geography at Oregon State University, where her thesis work is centered around how personal values and group belonging influence farmer decision-making, specifically in response to climate change. From a research perspective, she is most interested in how environmental challenges are almost always entangled with social issues and caused by unjust social systems. She aims to bridge gaps left by oppression, particularly in science communication, and strives to make her work accessible by many audiences.

Olivia has also worked in various capacities in outdoor leadership and education. Currently, she is an instructor with the Adventure Leadership Institute at Oregon State University, where she teaches courses, leads trips, and mentors student leaders. She and her partner are also currently starting a tiny commercial farm in south Corvallis, where she is thrilled to get her hands in the soil again. In her (very minimal) free time, Olivia loves to get outside with her dog, her favorite activities being backpacking, rock climbing, and mountain biking.

Yadira Ruiz joined the board in May 2017 and is a full time organic farmer growing seasonal and storage crops at Sunbow Produce in the Willamette Valley. Yadira grew up in agriculture, watching her parents labor in commercial growing operations sometimes owned by local families but mostly owned by state wide corporations. It was the laborious nature of growing food that set her on a non-agricultural professional path where her love of culture, language and community were put to use as a teacher in California, a social worker, and social justice program director in Illinois. Her path included many volunteer roles ranging from mediation to advising young people doing activist work. Yadira was also honored as a Pantagraph 20 Under 40 Leader Award recipient in 2009 and a graduate of UNC Chapel Hill's PREVENT Institute. 

Enriched by the experiences of her community involvement, the guidance of mentors and support of peers, Yadira's path took a turn when she was invited to an intimate lunch with Dolores Huerta at Illinois State University.  The food on Yadira's plate at that lunch took on a significance it had not had before. This eventually led to Yadira volunteering at a few small organic farms in her area and realizing the connection with food ran deep enough to make a big change. In 2010, Yadira returned to the Pacific Northwest to engage in the food system in the very way she had sworn off as a teenager. Farming with her partner Nate is a reality beyond "dreams come true," as she could not have imagined a life this good.