Meet the leaders of the Arroyo Food Cooperative...
Alexandra Berrie
Alexandra Berrie is the Arroyo Food Co-op's secretary and has been involved with the Co-op since October 2009. She first learned about cooperatives as an undergrad at U.C. Berkeley, where some of her friends lived in one of the storied housing co-ops. However, it wasn't until Alex's graduate school days at in the anthropology program at U.C. Davis that she joined her first food cooperative, back in 2001.
Food issues are near and dear to Alex's heart. She is an amateur cook in the original sense of the word: someone who has a hobby because she loves it (from Latin amare, "to love"). She has been a vegetarian for 15 years because she is concerned about treating animals humanely and because of the detrimental effects to the environment that meat production causes.
Alex has a keen desire to give back to her community. Because she feels drawn to public service, she teaches English at a charter high school called Options for Youth in Burbank, California.
Brian Chiu
Brian is a resident of Pasadena. He grew up in south San Diego border towns around surfers, corrido music, neighborhood mercados, and the Ocean Beach People's Market, and is a believer in the power of the local community. While in school, he experienced first-hand how to get by on a tight budget with the affordable food, books, and bicycle parts at various student-owned co-ops at UCSD. And he has since led an effort to form co-ops in graduate school, worked for a number of years as a community-labor organizer, and volunteered with the Arroyo Food Co-op in its membership drive. An engineer by training, Brian has worked in telecommunications and film camera design, and is currently a researcher in heart disease.
Mia Dunn
Born and raised in New York, Mia graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in journalism and moved to Pasadena in 1989. After a career in community journalism, she joined the development department at the Pasadena Humane Society & SPCA in 2001 where she was responsible for coordinating special events. In June 2010, she became the grant writer for the Boys & Girls Club of Pasadena.
A co-op member since May 2010, Mia was appointed to the Board of Directors in February 2011 and officially elected in May. She is also part of the co-op's Communications Team and leader of the Membership Team. A passion for knowing where her food comes from, what's in it and how it got to her plate is what fuels her commitment to the co-op, along with the belief that Pasadena and its surrounding communities deserve a store that offers products people can feel good about buying.
Mia is a voracious reader, an adventurous cook and an advocate for all earth's creatures.
Laura Floom Manning
Laura Flooom Manning was born in the UK, but immigrated to the Los Angeles area as a small child, and has lived here since. She joined the co-op in July of 2010 and soon started volunteering. She joined the membership committee, and then started taking over the bookkeeping tasks. In early in 2011 she was appointed to the board and then in May she was voted in for a two year term. Laura has a BS in Business Administration (Accounting - Information Systems) from CSUN, and an MS in Computer Science from Loyola-Marymount. After graduation she worked as software engineer at several companies, including ten years at JPL. She left the workforce in 1993 after the birth of her second child. She home schooled both of her children, who have now left for college. In the mid-70s Laura took a year off from college to work for the United Farm Workers. She started out working as a volunteer for the "Yes on 14" campaign that would have strengthened the rights of Farm Workers. After the election she joined them full time and was the office manager/bookkeeper for the Los Angeles Boycott office. She feels strongly about local control and sourcing of our food and fair trade issues. She also started volunteers at Ten Thousand Villages, one of the world’s oldest and largest fair trade organizations.
Tricia Keane
Tricia Keane is a combination of backyard farmer, locavore, and land use and development attorney, who firmly believes that food that is both healthy for us and the environment should be accessible to everyone. Tricia has been a part of the Arroyo Food Co-op since early 2011. She was elected to the Board of Directors in May 2011 and currently serves as the lead of the Bricks & Mortar Team. Originally from Ohio, Tricia moved to California in 1998 to attend law school at UCLA and eventually made her way to Pasadena in 2002. She has been active in the local community for years, and regularly volunteers her time for issues that are near and dear to her heart, such as animal rights and welfare and the empowerment of women and youth throughout our communities. Tricia is also a member of the Board of Directors of the YWCA of Greater Los Angeles. In her free time, Tricia gets outside as much as possible, and you may have seen her running and running and running all over the Pasadena and Altadena areas.
Joe Masiero
Joe is currently a postdoctoral researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and has lived here since October 2009. Originally from New Jersey, he studied astronomy as an undergraduate at Penn State University and got his Ph.D. in the same field from the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy in September 2009. Joe has previously served on the Board of Directors for Wisdom Factors International, a non-profit organization in Hawaii aiming to wise up the world. Joe has been involved with the Arroyo Food Co-op since October 2010 when he met with members tabling at the Victory Park Farmer's Market and was drawn in. He was elected to the Board of Directors for the Arroyo Food Co-op in May 2011 and is currently leading the IT Team. Joe has a passion for fresh, local food, and envisions the Co-op as a way bring good food to the people of Altadena and Pasadena (and beyond!) while building community and neighborliness. Joe's hobbies include cooking, hiking, and playing the bagpipes.
Patrick Reagan
The guy that started the Arroyo Food Co-op, Patrick got his start on the coast of New Hampshire. He attended the Rochester Institute of Technology to study photography and business management. A few jobs took him around the country - at one point to Seattle where his main grocery source was the Puget Consumer's Co-op. But it was the lure of show business that brought him to Southern California. The Walt Disney Company hooked him for 14 years for animation production management projects and later the design of software for those projects. Now a software contractor, Patrick develops database application software for a number of companies. Food, social rationality, community and environmental issues drive him to make the Co-op happen. It's the memory of that wonderful co-op in Seattle, and the dearth of sustainable grocery store options in our area, that keeps him going.