Aryana’s position as the CSA Procurement Manager supports the whole CSA team. She will be working to grow the program’s membership. She will also promote the organic produce and vegetables grown on Urban Tilth’s program farm sites by making selective purchases from partner farmers who grow quality organic produce and vegetables, and who align with Urban Tilth’s mission as a nonprofit.

Aryana feels that her unique cultural heritage as a 5th generation native Californian, along with her own experiences, has given her a compassionate understanding of how disparate access to resources historically has been based on economic or cultural privilege, and she highly appreciates how Urban Tilth is working to broaden that access.

Aryana’s core value is that everyone deserves access to basic needs for living healthy lives: such as low/no cost healthy food, clean water, and safe living spaces. She believes that all people regardless of ethnicity, or their economic status deserve these things as a human right. Aryana is grateful to be ‘doing the work’, and actively supporting Urban Tilth’s mission to provide access to healthy organic foods for people throughout Western Contra Costa County and specifically Richmond’s culturally diverse communities.

Yuri born in Fresno CA and was raised in Guanajuato Mx. to Mexican parents. She learned to work with plants from her grandparents and parents since the age of 5. She came back to the U.S. with her family in 2000 and worked in a party rental company, starting as a wear house lead, then became a department manager. She loves working with peers and likes to help as much as she can. She loves to learn to cook new recipes and love to spend time with her family.

Ebonay was born in San Diego, California and raised in Richmond, California. She has worked at Urban Tilth for two years and enjoys it so much. As a CSA Coordinator she helps harvest, pack and deliver the produce, free box program, and free farm stand. Before she applied to Urban Tilth she worked as an apprentice at Pie Ranch in Pescadero, California  for their CSA program. After this program, she attempted to look for a similar space closer to home and found Urban Tilth. She was recently able to tough it out and graduate from John F. Kennedy even while the Covid-19 Pandemic devastated all the schools and student life. During her time at urban tilth she has assisted in mending the greenway, and helped reactivate the Free Farm Stand Program.

Marco Lemus is a first-generation, Central-American and has lived in South Richmond all his life. After graduating from UC Santa Cruz with a major in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Marco joined the Urban Tilth Farm to Table CSA team in 2019, where he learned how to grow, clean, and distribute healthy locally grown food to local residents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Marco helped expand the capacity of the paid CSA  from 80 to 250 residents, and also helped establish the New Farmers to Families FREE Box Program which gives 190 Richmond families 

Jonathan Leal was born in Oakland California and moved around the bay throughout his childhood and finally settled in Richmond during his teenage years. They’ve been working with Urban Tilth for about four years now and says it’s probably their favorite job. Johnny’s responsibilities at Urban Tilth include helping run the CSA Free Farm Stand and Chicken Coop care. Johnny did the Summer Apprentice Program in 2017 and then was hired as staff in 2018. Since then, they’ve worked at different sites and gained a lot of knowledge from the land and the people around him. Johnny loves supporting and sharing info about local businesses, events, and wellness gatherings. By supporting local businesses, whether that be buying items or sharing info, it helps build connections and in a way builds support systems. Throughout their 4 years working in UT, building support systems and connections has been one of the best things Jonny loves about Urban Tilth.

Theresa Dixon joined Urban Tilth in 2020. Starting in the pandemic, Theresa delivered the many new boxes added to our CSA, and now works with our partner farms curating what is in the box each week. She comes from a background in project management; mostly in the event world and community engagement. She studied permaculture in Costa Rica, and is excited about how these systems play into creating a sustainable CSA here at Urban Tilth. Her family taught her from a young age about herbalism and compost, keeping the magic of nature close to her heart. Outside of work, you can find her dancing, doing yoga, or playing with horses.