Jessica Moncada, founder of Alkali Rye Beverage Shop, she/her

Entrepreneurship panelist

San Francisco born & Oakland raised. Jessica Moncada-Konte is the Owner & Cofounder of Alkali Rye and the Events & Experiences manager at Red Bay Coffee Roasters. These roles encompass her values and mission life; Creating inclusive community space for activation and collaboration, appreciation for flawless service and deep love for all libations. Like her business namesake, she works towards collective growth and economic empowerment within her communities.

Lyssandra Guerra, owner of Native Palms Nutrition

Health & wellness panelist

Lyssandra Guerra, a Bay Area native and founder of Native Palms Nutrition. As a certified Holistic Nutritionist, Health & Mindset Coach, and Energy Kinesiologist, she practices an integrative approach in providing gut and hormone healing support, while holding space for her clients to create a healthy relationship to food and their body. She is passionate in being a part of reinventing health care and is dedicated in helping others restore their health and reclaim their lives again.

Maria Moreno, ROC, she/her

Safe spaces panelists

Maria is a Venezuelan native, Miami raised, and Bay Area transplant. She has been a community organizer/advocate and training program coordinator for restaurant workers in the Bay Area for three years with the Restaurant Opportunities Center United. She also works in the restaurant industry in SF and has been in it for over nine years.

Zoe Carassco, UCSF Student Nurse-Midwifery, UCSF PTBi/SOLARS Community Advisory Board Member, she/her

Health & wellness panelist

Born in East San Jose and raised in Modesto, CA by her Mexican immigrant parents, Zoe grew up with understanding the engraved resiliency and fortitude of her Mexican immigrant heritage. That undeniable strength became magnified as she started my health care career. During undergrad, Zoe first recognized the elevated strength while serving undocumented immigrant and refugees at Street Level Health Project in East Oakland, CA. After college, she continued my health care dedication to immigrant communities at La Clinica de La Raza. She fell in love with reproductive health while working with the patients from San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center. Her passion for equitable health care was affirmed during my time volunteering as a birth and postpartum doula at San Francisco General Hospital, as well as being part of the UCSF Preterm Birth Initiative as a community advisory member. Zoe is passionate about birth and reproductive health justice, and she believes in many ways it’s the root of social justice. Currently, she is enrolled at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) where she has immersed herself all that is nursing and midwifery practice. As an aspiring midwife she plans to apply this wealth of knowledge towards empowering birthing and reproductive people, especially amongst communities of color.

UCSF Student Nurse-Midwifery/WHNP Specialty​

UCSF PTBi/SOLARS Community Advisory Board Member

Birth/Postpartum doula

zoe.carrasco@ucsf.edu

(she, her)

Blake Cole, owner Friends + Family Bar, she/her

Entrepreneurship Moderator

Blake Sondel is a Bay Area native with 15+ years experience in the restaurant/bar industry. She has worked in, developed, and managed several establishments in Oakland and San Francisco, including Hopscotch, The Kon-TIki, Doña Tomas, and Holy Mountain, just to name a few. She also co-founded Hot House, a special events project that has helped to raise thousands of dollars for local and national charities. She is currently the owner of Friends + Family Bar in Oakland, where she continues her commitment to create a safe and equitable work environment.

Dr. Akilah Cadet, founder of Change Cadet, a diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) consulting firm, she/her

Safe Spaces Moderator

Dr. Akilah Cadet is the founder of Change Cadet consulting, which offers a broad array of diversity services including executive coaching, strategic planning, innovation, and facilitation. Cadet is a French term that means soldier (and happens to be Akilah's last name). As it's often an uphill battle for women, people of color, and marginalized communities to achieve success in the workplace, Change Cadet prepares soldiers of change to overcome these continuous battles to be their best selves. Akilah has 15+ years of experience working in various organizations, with both private and public sector companies. She has literally all the degrees, lives in Oakland, and is a proud Beyoncé advocate.

Dr. Zoe Barnow, PsyD, she/her

Health & wellness panelist

Zoe Barnow is a bilingual (English/Spanish) licensed clinical psychologist. Dr. Barnow has a private practice in Oakland, California where she provides psychotherapy to adolescents, adults and couples, in addition to conducting forensic psychological assessments for immigration court. Her areas of focus include lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, transgender and non-binary identities, pregnancy and parenting support, and Spanish-speaking immigrants. She is also adjunct faculty at The Wright Institute and supervises psychology trainees in various capacities. Dr. Barnow is a queer, White, Jewish cis woman who is married with two dogs and two cats. She is also an avid plant grower.

Hillary Jansen, owner of Rose’s Taproom, she/her

Entrepreneurship panelist

Like so many of us in the service industry, Hillary is an artist that entered into it at a young age in order to sustain her creative pursuits. What she discovered was that service was deeply and meaningfully satisfying to her. The pace, the interactions, the participation in someone’s good time were stimulating and engaging. The idea of Roses’ sprung from that concept and is ultimately a creative collaboration between herself and husband/business partner, Luke Janson. She is in love with the idea of process as a creative endeavor and the exploration collaboration as a tool to reach and connect with her community. The two strive to treat it as an ongoing, fluid evolving art project.

When first discussing the concept, the two imagined a space in which beer was the driving force, but that would break the mold of the tired, played out ultra masculine beer bar that so predominated the industry. Hillary wanted to use non verbal design cues in the space that would signal to patrons a sense of inclusivity, welcomeness and femininity. Her goal was to open the doors to folks that had perhaps not had a chance to experience the magic of brewing due to the sheer fact that the spaces in which it took place were not made for them to feel comfortable or welcome in. To this end, Roses’ design is based around soft edges, feminine curves that mirror those of the brewing tanks, light tones and dripping with living plants. The hope is that these non-verbal design cues signal to guests that they may come as they are and that they are truly welcome.

Hillary is also committed to the idea that the restaurants and bars do not need to be run solely on the concept of competition for market share and territory, but rather be utilised as much as possible as platforms for their communities and bases for engagement and connections. Roses’ practices this through collaborations with various artists and charities always finding ways to celebrate and honor the unique connection between the two entities.

As Roses’ grows as a business it is Hillary’s goal that it also grows and evolves as a creative endeavor and tool for engagement within her Oakland community.

Karina Vlastnik, owner of Flowerhead Tea Co, she/her

Entrepreneurship panelist

Karina Vlastnik's passion for drinking tea began in 2013. After years of living in San Francisco she realized a gap between the growing world of artisan coffee and that of tea. She did some traveling and moved to Oakland to start a tea company. Juggling work as a waitress while building a brand was a consistent struggle for many years. Slowly but surely her company Steep Tea, began to rise and gain recognition throughout the bay by locking down accounts and doing larger events. Throughout 2019, Karina was working behind the scenes on rebranding her company and bringing it into a new light. In November, she launched Flowerhead Tea. She continues to focus on bringing floral organic tea blends to people around the bay and her teas can be found on stores around the country. She hopes to increase production throughout this year while curating events in her tea truck the "steep jeep".

Samar Nassar, owner of Hipline, she/her

Health & wellness Moderator

Samar is the Co-Founder of Hipline, a movement and community space for self-identified women in Oakland, California.

She can't stop dancing and is over the moon when people dance with her. She plays guitar and loves to work on her shredding.

Shakirah Simley, Director of the Office of Racial Equity for the city of San Francisco, she/her

Safe spaces panelists

Shakirah Simley is the inaugural Director for the newly-established Office of Racial Equity for the City and County of San Francisco. Prior to taking the helm of this department, Shakirah served as a Legislative Aide for the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; working for Supervisor Vallie Brown of District 5 in San Francisco. At SF City Hall, Shakirah staffed Supervisor Brown on legislation and policies regarding housing, homelessness, criminal justice, food access, and racial and gender issues. Shakirah has over a decade of experience working on food access and recreational equity policy issues, as well as national youth organizing and labor unionization campaigns. Prior to joining city government, Shakirah served as a Fellow for the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture. Her most notable role was serving as the Community Programs Manager for the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses in San Francisco, where she directed philanthropy and community development programs with a penchant for youth empowerment and food equity. In her tenure, Bi-Rite supported over 2,500 local organizations with over $1.2 million dollars of investment. Shakirah earned her kitchen cred early on, as the owner of a successful small artisanal jam company, Slow Jams, run out of La Cocina. A community organizer since the age of 19, Shakirah received training and campaign experience through the Midwest Academy and Philadelphia Jobs with Justice.

Shakirah received her undergraduate degree with honors from the University of Pennsylvania, and received her Master’s degree at the University Of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG) in Italy via a Fulbright research scholarship. Shakirah is recognized widely for her food work; she has been recognized as change-maker by the Berkeley Food Institute, CUESA, Cherry Bombe, and Zagat. Shakirah was also honored by SF Mayor Ed Lee as a Good Samaritan for her neighborhood activism, and a Special Commendation from the City of San Francisco from then Board President London Breed for her community-based food work.

Outside of her day to day, she continues speak at major conferences, teach courses on food equity, write about the intersection of food, race, and gender, organize folks of color in food, via her collaborative, Nourish|Resist. Shakirah serves as a board member with CUESA, Northern California Community Loan Fund Food Advisory, and Equity at The Table. The daughter of a social worker, and granddaughter of a Black Panther, Shakirah was born and raised in Harlem, New York, and has lived in San Francisco for over 10 years.

Dawn Edwards, VP Oakland LGBTQ Center, she/her

Safe spaces panelists

Dawn (she/her) was born and raised in Los Angeles, but currently resides in Oakland, where she’s lived off and on for the past 30 years. She earned a BA in Political Science, a Master of Public Administration, completed three years of law school, and has recently been accepted to the graduate program in Early Childhood Education at Mills College. Her professional focus has been centered on non-profit management, executive-level administration, legal research, data collection/evaluation, in addition to delivering direct services and facilitating Know Your Rights workshops to the community.

Currently Dawn has been working in an elementary school, where her focus has been on early childhood development, parent engagement, outreach and an overall community wellness vision. She is trained in all three Tiers of Restorative Justice, with the intention of holding restorative justice circles and having restorative conversations with students experiencing conflict. She is the Vice Chair of the School Site Council which plays a role in decision making at the school, specifically regarding Title 1 funds. She also sits on the school’s Culture and Climate Committee. At the community center, Dawn assists both Joe and Jeff with a variety of administrative and outreach tasks, and coordinates/facilitates several support groups.

In her spare time, Dawn is a published author with two current book projects in the works, a blogger, and a social and political activist who wholly believes that she has the responsibility to use her words, whether they be written or verbal, to uplift, motivate and specifically address issues that affect her community. She is a trained dancer and gymnast who has performed with several companies throughout the Bay Area, and currently teaches ballet, contemporary and West African dance at the Downtown Berkeley YMCA, and she’s also blessed to be the mother of 3 beautiful young black men.