Anna Goldrich
Executive Director
Anna has been active in Oregon’s environmental community since moving back home sixteen years ago. She worked to elect environmental leaders, as Executive Director for the Oregon League of Conservation Voters for five years. She has spent the past dozen years working as a consultant for many of Oregon’s best-known environmental organizations.
Inspired by the daily exposure to fun, engaging, environmental education that her own kids get at Sunnyside Environmental School, Anna is excited about the opportunity to make similar experiences available to children in under-served parts of the city.
“I’ve seen firsthand, how kids enjoy eating almost anything they can harvest themselves fresh from a farm, and I love how the Sauvie Island Center gives so many kids that opportunity”.
Jennifer James
Education Program Manager
Jennifer has been educating youth (and perhaps a few adults) about food, farming and the land at Sauvie Island Center since 2008. In addition to earning a BFA, she studied at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz.
She has: designed and developed school gardens for Portland Public Schools – taught social justice and environmental education in a wide variety of settings – worked on many organic farms around the country and abroad – taught propagation to adults at CASFS and for Portland’s new Beginning Urban Farmer Apprenticeship program – taught nutrition and cooking classes to underserved community members as a volunteer – and spends as much time as possible appreciating surrounding natural beauty. She loves digging the soil, growing flowers, botanizing, hiking, birding, reading and creating.
She is heartened by conversations with youth field trip participants, such as the one that follows – “I never knew carrots had stems and leaves. I saw it in a cartoon once but thought it was fake. Now I know its real!” (Yes!)
Joanne Lazo
Marketing Manager
Joanne Lazo joined the Sauvie Island Center staff in March of 2011 as a part-time Marketing Manager. She grew up in the Pacific Northwest where her first job was picking strawberries on the small farms that dotted the hills west of Salem.
After graduating from the University of Oregon and spending several post-college years working in advertising in New York City, the beauty and bounty of Oregon called her home. Recently, Joanne served as Marketing Director for the Portland Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, where she developed and administered the school’s corporate giving program.
Joanne has always been committed to community service, doing volunteer work while attending college and participating in an afterschool tutoring program at a New York City homeless shelter. Upon returning to Oregon, she volunteered with a variety of non-profit organizations. Working with the Sauvie Island Center allows Joanne to merge her two passions: commitment to community and a love of fresh, local food.
