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.

Alice Cravens grew up in San Francisco always hovering in the kitchen until her dad, who usually made delicious pancakes for Sunday breakfast, let her make crepes instead. Who knew that would open up the joys of cooking for her? It did.

Now, decades later, Alice manages Heat of the Kitchen, an active professional practice class at Ida B. Wells Continuation High School that links the powers of cooking, eating, and serving together to transferable skill building and the amazing, positive value we all have inside us. Her favorite breakfast is shakshouka (poached eggs in a spicy tomato stew, perfect for dipping bread!) when she isn’t making crepes for her family.

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

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.

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 Aurora 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.