Inspired by her maternal grandmother, Joyce Lin-Conrad has worked in food and education for the past two decades. She started her career as a line cook at The Ritz-Carlton; worked as a private chef in Boston, Seattle, and Silicon Valley; taught cooking at the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley; helped launch the environmental education nonprofit Education Outside within San Francisco Unified School District; and was head of experiential programs at the edtech startup AltSchool.

Joyce is a graduate of Princeton University and the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts. Her immigrant parents indoctrinated her well: she would eat the classic Taiwanese breakfast of hot, sweet soymilk with sesame-green onion da bing stuffed with egg every morning (and evening) if she could.

Geetika Agrawal spent nine years as Program Director at La Cocina, scaling and leading the nonprofit incubator that supports food businesses run by talented women from communities of color, many of which have become internationally acclaimed Bay Area destinations. Today, she coaches grassroots leaders and entrepreneurs on scaling their organizations, with a special focus on hyper-local creative enterprises. She has served on the boards of the Southern Foodways Alliance and Restore Oakland and never tires of finding a great bite to eat—or an even better food story.

Breakfast is Geetika’s family’s favorite meal to cook together, often reflecting the blended influences of San Francisco’s multifaceted cuisine and her Indian heritage (chai goes with everything!). Still, she is particularly fond of a classic diner breakfast—two runny eggs, hash browns, sausage, and toast with a cup of black coffee—because when you grow up in an immigrant family, it’s Americana that feels exotic.

Janette Fernandez was inspired by her mother’s fancy meals on Saturdays and learned to cook by watching cooking shows and reading recipes. She grew up in Lima, Peru, where she spent the early years of her career as a dentist. Now she teaches Spanish immersion kindergarten at Alvarado Elementary School.

Before joining the board of directors, Janette volunteered at The Breakfast Project for many years and helped launch the inaugural Breakfast Around the World summer camp. Cooking together in community at Harvey Milk has deepened her appreciation for how much respect, tolerance, active listening, appreciation, and joy goes into this work. She loves the classic Peruvian breakfast traditionally eaten on Sundays: pan con chicharrón y tamal.

Nick Lee grew up in the Bay Area with a large extended family that frequently gathered for Chinese banquet dinners and expansive home-cooked meals. He started his career cooking in hotel kitchens in the Hamptons and Tahoe before taking an AmeriCorps position at the Edible Schoolyard Project teaching cooking to middle school students. After that first year, Nick spent more than a decade on staff there and led curriculum development, teacher training, and the growth of Edible Schoolyard in Stockton, CA. He now works in fundraising at the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank, still driven by the belief that food is one of the most powerful ways to bring people together and help them thrive. 

Nick’s favorite breakfast is a hot bowl of wonton mein, a love that began on childhood trips to Chinatown with his dad.

Nicole Thomas has been obsessed with food since her very first bite. As a child she pretended to be sick in order to stay home and watch Julia Child with wide, hungry eyes. When she opened the cupboards she didn’t find the cornucopia of ingredients used by Julia, which then began her lifelong interest in food access, equity, and justice, and making a way out of no way. 

Over the years since, Nicole has been a cooking teacher at the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley; a baker at Arizmendi, a worker-owned collective; and a cook who has stirred many spoons in a wide variety of kitchens. She is a graduate of Mills College, U.C. Berkeley School of Law, and Vermont College of Fine Arts. She currently spends her time as a writer, musician, and mother, and as a teacher at St. Paul’s Episcopal School in Oakland. Her favorite breakfast is scrambled eggs cooked gently and slowly (just like Julia taught her) with herbed roasted potatoes and multi-grain toast with butter and apricot jam.