On May 8, 2023, Shape Up SF and the SFDPH Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Team convened a virtual conversation with this diverse panel of experts and food advocates who will share their unique perspectives and offer insights into how we may decolonize the food system. Watch the webinar above or view the slides. Read the notes with resources from the webinar.
Esperanza 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 is a strategic leader whose passions are community led economic development, equitable and sustainable food systems and racial justice. She has worked with nonprofits for over 20 years with an emphasis in leadership, systemic change, and policy advocacy. Her work has supported social justice entrepreneurs and movement leaders in removing policy barriers, consolidating resources and accessing grant and lending capital for their nonprofits and small businesses. As Executive Director of Food & Farm Communications Fund, a movement-led participatory grantmaker, Esperanza is committed to community-controlled capital structures, narrative shift and emboldening transformative food and agricultural systems change.