Ramon Gabrieloff-Parish (Board Chair)

As an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Naropa University Ramon focuses is on the equity dimensions of the sustainability movement through courses in food and environmental justice. He also teaches foundations in embodiment, contemplative learning and theory, diversity and social identity and community learning.   

   

Ramon is committed to the revival of rites of passage and other ceremonies and practices of cultural, natural and cosmic regeneration, through his work with organizations like Golden Bridge, Youth Passageways and his recent role as board chair of Frontline Farming. 

​

René Galindo (Secretary)

I have been an educator forty-one years. I started as a first-grade teacher and learned what it means to be an educator from spending countless days with six and seven year olds. I recall hatching chicks in the classroom as well as working in the school vegetable garden with my students. We ate a salad from the garden before we had cupcakes at our class party. I grew up in Nogales on the US-Mexico border where my family has resided for generations. On the border, my family’s foodways included wild plants such as verdolagas (purslane), quelites (greens), and nopalitos (prickly pear). We also drank refreshing summer beverages made from melon, papaya, jamaica (hibiscus), cebada (barley), or tamarindo. As kids we foraged in the nearby hills for kovenas (wild bulbs), pechitas (mesquite pods) and bellotas (acorns). The borderlands is ranch county and we all had relatives that still lived on ranches in Mexico. I am an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Denver. I currently teach two classes that I developed on topics that define our times. Both classes are centered on equity and social justice. One class is on undocumented immigration and the other is on food justice. The food justice class examines food in the city (food waste, food disparities/iniquities, & food co-ops), urban agriculture, and land ethics. My students and I regularly volunteer at Sisters Garden and Celebration garden during the semester. My connection to Frontline Farms is based on years of working alongside the founders on urban farms and in community events.

​

Jenifer Rodriguez 

Jenifer Rodriguez is the Managing Attorney of the Migrant Farm Worker Division (MFWD) of Colorado Legal Services. Prior to becoming the managing attorney in 2013, Jenifer was a staff attorney in the MFWD since 2007. The MFWD provides comprehensive legal services to agricultural workers throughout Colorado, including survivors of labor trafficking. In addition to assisting agricultural workers who are survivors of trafficking or other types of criminal workplace abuses on applications for immigration relief, the MFWD also litigates wage and hour, discrimination, trafficking, and other employment claims in civil lawsuits and administrative agency proceedings. 

​