Our Staff

Staff

Roseann (Rose) CohenExecutive Director of CAN

Rose is the Executive Director of the Community Agroecology Network (CAN) and a passionate advocate for amplifying the voices of youth and women to lead grassroots social change. At CAN, Rose engages in participatory community-based learning and action, and establishing strategic partnerships to further agroecology and food sovereignty at the intersection of gender justice, alternative economies and immigration. She is a bicultural, bilingual Latina and daughter of Colombian immigrants. Her doctoral research in Colombia focused on campesino and indigenous land claims under conditions of insecure land tenure, forced displacement and violence. This experience shaped her decision to work at an organization committed to co-creating knowledge with small farmers, migrant communities and the people most deeply connected to soil, land, plants, animals and growing food.

Rose holds a Ph.D. from the Environmental Studies Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, with a specialization in Latin American and Latino Studies. Rose was a fellow at the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University, and serves as a Research Associate at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems (CASFS) at the University of California, and the Agroecology Livelihoods Collaborative at the University of Vermont.

Carmen CortezAssociate Director of CAN

Carmen is the Associate Director at CAN and is driven by her deep commitment to community processes of exchange, food sovereignty, and the connection of land, culture, and community self-governance. Through her involvement in research, community organizing and teaching, Carmen has developed multiple collaborations with farmers, scientists, and community member co-creating agroecology and food systems courses in Santa Ana, Los Angeles, and Belize Central America. Through such collective learning experiences, community members and students compliment their own traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) with scientific knowledge on traditional farm management, land use, indigenous self-governance, solidarity economies, and the economic and political realities of community land tenure in a globalized market.

Carmen holds a Ph.D. in Ecology from the University of California Davis Graduate Group in Ecology (GGE). Her dissertation work on human ecology focused on examining agroecological strategies used for intensifying milpa farming by Maya farmers and the impact of the formalized school system on time spent acquiring TEK by young people in the Maya region of Southern Belize.

Yadira MontenegroProject Manager

Yadira first learned of CAN’s work in 2008 and by 2011, she was coordinating the Youth Leadership for Food Security and Food Sovereignty Project with CAN’s network partner, the Union of Cooperatives Augusto Cesar Sandino San Ramón (UCA San Rámon). She also has coordinated CAN Field Studies with UCA San Ramón. Yadira currently oversees AgroEco® Coffee’s Funds for Sustainable Agriculture and the Unpaid Work of Women, as well as CAN’s International Youth Network (RIAC-Jóven).

She graduated in 1993 as an Engineering Agronomist, and worked for 21 years as the Director of Community Development at the UCA San Rámon.

Minelia Xiu CancheProject Manager — Southern Mexico

Minelia is indigenous Mayan and comes from a campesino family where agroecology has been a way of life. Her history has led her to prepare professionally to protect the diversity in her environment, her indigenous people being part of this same diversity. Minelia studied biology, with a specialty in ecology and conservation of vertebrates. She formed a peasant school in her community to empower men and women, promoting agroecology as a cultural movement. Over time, she specialized in promoting the breeding, management and conservation of native stingless bees (meliponas), giving her the opportunity for cultural exchange with other indigenous peoples.

She earned a MA in Administration and Sustainable Business Development at CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Teaching Center) in Costa Rica, where she focused her graduate work on the development of a strategic plan for an indigenous cooperative in Brazil.

Friends of CAN (FoCAN)

FoCANStudent Leadership Team

Currently there are student positions available at FoCAN. Please contact CAN at can.marketing@canunite.org for more information.

AgroEco® Coffee Stand Team at the Aptos Farmer’s Market

Youth and Community Coffee Team

Currently there are AgroEco® Coffee Farmer’s Market stand positions open. Please contact CAN at operations@canunite.org for more information or directly submit an application here by clicking on the bee.