Marsha Guerrero, Director Special Projects,
Chez Panisse Foundation
Marsha is a native of northern California. Her early love affair with food and cooking was fueled by the food revolution of the early seventies, which had its birthplace in northern California’s Bay Area.

Through the next twenty-five years Ms. Guerrero worked with Sally Schmitt, founder of The French Laundry and Maggie Waldron at Ketchum Communications. She joined Larry Mindel at restaurant groups Spectrum Foods and Il Fornaio, to manage well-known restaurants, oversee marketing efforts and direct production bakery operations throughout California.

A lifetime dream of living and working in another country was realized in the early nineties, when Marsha was recruited to lead the development of a coffee company in Singapore. She returned to the United States in 2000 to work with her longtime friend and mentor, Alice Waters.

As Director, Special Projects at Chez Panisse Foundation, Ms. Guerrero serves as the Program Coordinator for The Edible Schoolyard program and divides her time between King School, the Chez Panisse Foundation and the School Lunch Initiative.

Several years ago Marsha rescued a chicken that became the first of the beautiful brood of fourteen hens who lay perfect eggs for dishes our students create in the ESY kitchen.

Kyle Cornforth, Program Associate
Kyle’s tenure at The Edible Schoolyard began in 2000, when she worked for a year as an Americorps member in The Edible Schoolyard garden, kitchen and office. Ms. Cornforth’s connection to kids and garden education was fostered while studying at Humboldt State and working in a local community garden frequented by children and their parents.

After completing her undergraduate studies at Mills College, Kyle returned to ESY as an enthusiastic volunteer. She assumed the position of Administrative Coordinator in August 2006. In addition to her capable organizational skills, Kyle brings varied artistic talents and affinity for working with students on garden structures. If you look carefully, you’ll find their sweet waddle fence tangled in willow at the edge of the garden.

Beth Sonnenberg, Teacher Liaison
As a founding teacher of The Edible Schoolyard, Beth Sonnenberg has been integral to the conception and development of the curricular and experiential aspects of the ESY program.

Ms. Sonnenberg has been teaching 6th grade Math and Science in BUSD for 18 years and enjoys working side by side with her students in the garden. While on her sabbatical year in 2002, she traveled through Central America on a motorcycle. As a child in the Midwest, Beth grew tomatoes.

Susie Walsh Daloz, Garden Manager and Teacher
While a student at Oberlin College, Susie fell in love with the school farm there and began managing compost and farm produce pickups for her local co-op. Summers were spent constructing trails and working with youth in the woods of New England, Kentucky, Utah and Idaho.

After college, Ms Walsh Daloz was able to combine her love of sustainable agriculture and youth advocacy through her work with The Food Project near Boston. After three wonderful years and before moving west, Ms. Walsh Daloz spent a season running Tamarack Farm at Farm & Wilderness, a farm and outdoor educational program in Vermont.

In her first year in California, Susie created a school garden program at Glenbrook Middle School in Concord. After working as a volunteer for many months in the ESY garden, Ms. Walsh Daloz joined The Edible Schoolyard team in August, 2006 and is thrilled to be teaching King students, mentoring Americorps members and gardening where the growing season never ends.

Wendy Johnson, Garden Consultant
An active member of Green Gulch Zen Center since 1975, Ms. Johnson is a founding director of the Organic Farm and Garden Apprenticeship Program at the Zen Center and has worked for the last ten years to establish gardening programs in Bay Area schools.

Wendy has thirty years of hands-on experience with organic agriculture, education, and Zen meditation training. She spends two days each week encouraging, advising, teaching, training and mentoring our students and garden staff.

Ms. Johnson is the author of ‘Gardening at the Dragon’s Gate’ – a memoir of the principals of an organic farmer through the mind of a meditator – to be released in spring, 2007.

Esther Cook, Chef Teacher
Since it’s inception in 1997, Esther Cook has been the Chef Teacher at The Edible Schoolyard kitchen. Ms. Cook has developed a cadre of kitchen lessons linked to classroom curriculum. She is a professional chef, artist, storyteller and educator of the first order.

Ms Cook developed and taught an innovative cooking program called Cooks Tell Stories and taught children to cook fresh, seasonal meals through Market Cooking for Kids, a program of the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture. Her youth spent on a farm in rural New England, is an important point of reference in defining the quality of the learning experience for her students.

Nicole Thomas, Assistant Chef Teacher
As a young girl growing up in Washington D.C., Nicole would pretend to be sick in order to stay home from school to watch Julia Child’s cooking show. Ms Thomas’ working stints in restaurants while touring the U.S. and Europe as a drummer with her band, fostered her culturally rich culinary education.

Ms. Thomas received a BA in Ethnic Studies from Mills College and a law degree from U.C. Berkeley. While at Mills, she mentored youth from the neighboring community where her love of cooking and creating with kids, was seeded. A law student obsessed with all things food related, Ms. Thomas focused her research on food justice and food access, in communities of color in Oakland.

Before coming to Edible, Nicole was a member of Arizmendi, a worker-owned baking collective in Oakland. She home schools her stepsons David and Julian.

Benjamin Eichorn, Apprentice Garden Teacher
Benjamin was raised on Country Flat Farm in Big Sur, California, where his family has been cultivating delectable fruits and vegetables for more than two decades. He studied Sociology and Environmental Studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington and conducted his senior thesis research on The Edible Schoolyard during the 2004-2005 school year.

Mr. Eichorn believes that working in the ESY garden at King Middle School is the most direct and meaningful way he can take part in what has become an internationally renowned movement toward healthier eating, place-based education, and experiential, sense-centered learning. Benjamin is also a passionate student of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian percussion.

Rebecca Bloomfield, Americorps Member at The Edible Schoolyard
Having recently relocated to Berkeley to work at The Edible Schoolyard, Ms. Bloomfield grew up in Ohio and studied International Development at Queen's University in Ontario, where she became interested in food justice and security. Her initial farming experience took place after college, on an organic farm in Sicily.

Ms. Bloomfield spent the past year at living at Adamah, a Jewish learning fellowship that integrates organic farming and sustainable living in Northwestern Connecticut. Rebecca is deeply committed to the belief that healthy food should be a right and not a privilege and to making this a reality. When she's not at Edible, Ms. Bloomfield is hiking, playing guitar, cooking and exploring the East Bay area.

Vera Fabian, Americorps Member at The Edible Schoolyard
The granddaughter of an Illinois corn farmer, Vera spent childhood summers exploring old barns and bountiful fields. Having grown up in apartments without room for even a backyard garden, she dreamed of someday growing her own food. At 13, Vera read about a project where middle school kids learned to grow and cook their own food. Right then and there, she decided that someday she would work at The Edible Schoolyard.

Vera studied Anthropology and International Studies at the University of North Carolina with a focus on food, agriculture, and economics. She spent summers climbing mountains and working on farms in Nova Scotia, France, and back home in North Carolina. In 2005, she lived in Mali and worked with a women's garden co-op on the Niger. The next year, she went to East Africa to work with an organic farmers' training program and Wangari Maathai's Green Belt Movement.

After college, Vera worked for Slow Food, organizing the Eat Local Triangle campaign to connect local growers to consumers. She is now amazed, each day, to find herself living herchildhood dream at Edible, teaching children the wonders of growing one's own food.

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