Our Team

The nonprofit board and advisory board of Santa Barbara Agriculture & Farm Education Foundation and Sweet Wheel Farm are rooted in decades of hands-on service, both in the fields and in the community. Together, these leaders steward a vision of food security, environmental regeneration, and health equity that begins in the soil and extends to every household reached by the farm’s programs. Their combined governance ensures that every initiative—whether it is feeding food-fragile families, educating children, or piloting new farm technologies—remains accountable, transparent, and deeply aligned with the nonprofit’s mission.

Board members bring professional depth in nonprofit leadership and governance, helping the Foundation develop sustainable funding strategies, rigorous oversight, and long-term planning that protects Sweet Wheel Farm as a community asset. This expertise sustains a closed-loop, community-driven food system that grows, harvests, and distributes chemical-free produce within Santa Barbara County’s food desert communities. Through careful policy setting and strategic partnerships, the board safeguards the farm’s role as an educational green space, a fire-resilient greenbelt, and a dependable source of dignified nutrition for vulnerable residents.

The advisory board layers in specialized knowledge in farming, botany, soil health, nutrition, and public health, ensuring that Sweet Wheel’s regenerative practices and “food as medicine” ethos stay at the leading edge of science and best practice. Advisors help shape curriculum that teaches children and adults how food is grown, propagated, grafted, and harvested without herbicides, pesticides, or synthetic fertilizers, connecting ecological literacy with lifelong health. This multidisciplinary guidance keeps the farm’s education programs practical, evidence-based, and culturally responsive for veterans, medically fragile neighbors, and under-resourced families alike.

Marketing, communications, engineering, and innovation experts on the advisory team help amplify the Foundation’s impact and strengthen its resilience. From telling the story of a zero-emissions, closed-loop farm system to designing water- and energy-saving infrastructure such as moisture-capture technologies, these advisors translate complex ideas into accessible solutions and community support. Their collaboration with board leadership allows Sweet Wheel Farm and the Santa Barbara Agriculture & Farm Education Foundation to remain a model of regenerative agriculture, community-powered nutrition, and hopeful innovation for Santa Barbara County and beyond

Board, Advisory Board &
Fund Development Committee

Lisa Blades

Lisa Blades is a longtime member of the Santa Barbara community with
deep ties throughout the region. A resident of Carpinteria — home to a
majority of the families served by our Healthy Farmed Food Solutions
Project — Lisa brings a personal, on-the-ground connection to the
foundation's mission.
A dedicated believer in the project's work, Lisa lends her extensive
community relationships and genuine passion for chemical-free,
accessible food to help further Sweet Wheel Farms' impact in
Carpinteria and beyond.
Community Advocate

Jasmine Jefferies

Organic Farm Expert, Secretary

Leslie Person Ryan

Community Board Member

Diane Pannkuk

Diane Pannkuk is a longtime Montecito civic leader and philanthropist
whose fingerprints are on many of the community's most beloved
institutions. She is best known as the founder of Montecito's beloved
"Village 4th" July 4th celebration in Manning Park, a tradition she
helped launch and has championed for decades as a cornerstone of
community life.

A dedicated and prolific board member, Diane has lent her leadership
to a wide range of organizations, including the Montecito Association
(where she served as Vice President), New Beginnings Counseling Center
(where she served as Board President for a decade and has been a board
member for more than thirteen years), the Junior League of Santa
Barbara, and the Women's Fund of Santa Barbara. She was honored by the
Montecito Association as "Citizen of the Year" in recognition of her
sustained contributions to the community.

Diane brings this same spirit of civic dedication to her work with the
Santa Barbara Agriculture and Farm Education Foundation, supporting
Sweet Wheel Farms' mission to deliver chemical-free, healthy food to
families across Santa Barbara County. She holds a B.A. in
Communication from UCLA and an M.B.A. from George Washington
University, and lives in Santa Barbara with her family.

Michael Porter

Founder, Community Non-Profit Leader, Entrepreneur, Farmer
Leslie Person Ryan is the President and CEO of the Santa Barbara
Agriculture and Farm Education Foundation, the nonprofit behind Sweet
Wheel Farms' Healthy Farmed Food Solutions Project. Under her
leadership, the organization was able to save the farm from
development and she operates a chemical-free farm in Summerland,
California, delivering fresh, healthy food each week to nearly 1,700
people across Santa Barbara County.

A well-known entrepreneur and sought-after speaker on regenerative
agriculture, Leslie brings a rare combination of business acumen and
grassroots conviction to her work. She has guided the Foundation's
growth from a single farm into a countywide food-access network,
forging partnerships with local schools, launching a robust gleaning
program, and pioneering water-innovation projects — including a system
of Warka-style water towers designed to pull moisture from the air for
irrigation, addressing water scarcity.

Leslie's civic leadership runs deep in the Santa Barbara community.
She is a past president of the Coast Village Business Association,
Summerland Beautiful, and the Junior League of Santa Barbara — a track
record of service that reflects her enduring commitment to the people
and places she calls home.

Her leadership reflects an unwavering belief that healthy,
chemically-free food is not a privilege but a right — and that
innovation, community partnership, and tenacity can meet even the most
urgent needs with dignity.

Elizabeth Raskin, M.D.

Architect, 2030 Vision Advisor
Michael Patrick Porter is a licensed architect and founder of Michael
Patrick Porter Architect, an award-winning Santa Barbara firm
recognized with the 2022 AIA Santa Barbara Design Award. He holds a
degree in urban planning from California State Polytechnic University,
Pomona, and is a John S. Bolles Fellow of the California Council of
the American Institute of Architects.

Michael's practice spans architecture, interiors, and landscape design
across Southern California, with a focus on custom residential
renovations and high-performance new homes that integrate Passive
House standards, sustainable materials, and solar energy systems to
minimize ecological impact and maximize resilience. His design
approach is rooted in close observation of and collaboration with
clients, resulting in work that reflects both individual aspiration
and the character of the coastal California landscape.

Beyond his practice, Michael has long been engaged with the region's
cultural life, having served on the boards of the Museum of
Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, the Newport Harbor Art Museum (now the
Orange County Museum of Art), the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and
California State University Long Beach's University Art Museum
Advisory Board. He also serves on the committee for the Monterey
Design Conference, a biennial international gathering of architects,
and advises 2023 Visions, an organization dedicated to using artistic
imagination to shape new models for society.

Michael brings this same ethic of sustainable, thoughtful design and
community engagement to his role with Sweet Wheel Farms and the
Healthy Farmed Food Solutions Project, supporting the farm's mission
of chemical-free food production and its broader vision for
sustainable infrastructure.

Otticina Ryan

Cancer Surgeon
Elizabeth R. Raskin, MD, is a colorectal surgeon and Surgical Director
of the Margolis Family Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program within the
Digestive Health Institute at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in
Newport Beach, California. She received her medical degree from the
University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine, and brings nearly two
decades of experience in colon and rectal surgery, including advanced
laparoscopic and robot-assisted surgical techniques for complex
colorectal and oncologic conditions. Prior to joining Hoag, Dr. Raskin
served as Chief of the Division of Colon and Rectal Surgery and
Director of Robotic Surgical Education at the University of
California, Davis Medical Center.

A widely published researcher and educator, Dr. Raskin has contributed
to numerous peer-reviewed publications and textbooks on inflammatory
bowel disease, complex diverticular disease, and ostomy care, and
regularly lectures nationally and internationally on colorectal
surgery and robotics. Her clinical interests extend beyond the
operating room to include energy medicine and functional healing as
adjuncts to surgical care.

It is this dual perspective — as both a surgeon and a student of
whole-body health — that informs Dr. Raskin's conviction that the
origins of much of the disease she treats surgically can be traced
back to the food supply, and specifically to the way that food is
grown. In her assessment, the widespread use of agricultural chemicals
and the depletion of soil health are not peripheral to her surgical
caseload but causally connected to it; it is her professional belief
that she performs surgery as frequently as she does because of how our
food is grown and produced.

This conviction underlies her role as a board advisor to Sweet Wheel
Farms and the Healthy Farmed Food Solutions Project, where she
advocates for chemical-free, regeneratively grown food as a form of
preventive medicine — an upstream intervention capable of reducing the
burden of disease long before it requires surgical treatment.

Bruno Rocca

Marketing Expert, Treasurer
Ottocina Ryan is the owner and publisher of Santa Barbara Life & Style
Magazine, where she has built a platform celebrating the people,
businesses, and culture of the Santa Barbara community. A recognized
entrepreneurial speaker and innovator throughout the region, Ottocina
brings a rare combination of media savvy, marketing expertise, and
business acumen to every venture she touches.
She holds a B.S. in Luxury Marketing from Babson College, one of the
nation's top-ranked entrepreneurship programs, and furthered her
studies in Luxury Marketing at the Sorbonne University in Paris. This
international, brand-focused education shapes her sharp instinct for
storytelling, positioning, and building lasting community connections.
Coming from a farming family, Ottocina carries a lifelong belief in
chemical-free, sustainable agriculture — a passion that led her to
serve as Treasurer for the Santa Barbara Agriculture and Farm
Education Foundation and Sweet Wheel Farms' Healthy Farmed Food
Solutions Project. She is proud to lend her marketing expertise and
entrepreneurial energy to help grow the farm's mission of providing
chemical-free food to those in need across Santa Barbara County.

Susan Petrovich

Farmer, Engineer
Bruno Rocca is an engineer based in Ventura, California, and a farm
owner in Northern California, bringing a dual perspective of technical
precision and hands-on agricultural experience to his advisory role
with Sweet Wheel Farms and the Healthy Farmed Food Solutions Project.

His engineering background equips him to think systematically about
the infrastructure challenges facing the farm — from water access to
irrigation to the practical mechanics of scaling a chemical-free
operation — while his own experience owning and operating farmland
gives him firsthand insight into the realities of agricultural
production. This combination of disciplines positions Bruno as a
valuable advisor to the farm's efforts to build sustainable,
innovative solutions to the constraints facing chemical-free food
production in Santa Barbara County.

Rebecca Cross

Legal Counsel

Fund Development Committee

Margie Bushman

Dani Ison

Diane Pannkuk

Amy Sweeney

Mariam Mosinyan

Legal Counsel

Sharon Bradford

Jane Glanville

Susan Kalt

Wes Roe

Kelly Vincent

Palmer Jackson JR.

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