BIOGRAPHIES

Steering Committee

Andrea Jadwin

A founding and active member of SFGRO, Andrea Jadwin has lived and gardened in San Francisco since 1981. She is a member of White Crane Springs Community Garden and has a special interest in urban agriculture and gardening programs for children. Andrea is a sales and marketing executive in the telecommunications industry.

Jude Koski

Jude Koski is a founding core member of SFGRO and served as the Director from 2004-2008.  Since 1996, he has dedicated his professional career to positive youth development, environmental, racial, and social justice work.  In his former Garden Coordinator role at Page Street Community Garden , he spearheaded an 18 month campaign that ultimately saved the garden from being developed.  Jude is the Northern Region Supervisor for California Youth Connection (CYC), one of nation’s leading statewide advocacy organizations for current and former foster youth.  He presently is working towards an MBA in Sustainable Management at the Presidio School and holds a BS in Entrepreneurship from Johnson & Wales University, College of Business. 

Kearstin Krehbiel

Kearstin Krehbiel is a former landscaper, turned teacher, turned community organizer. She is committed to supporting and sustaining urban open space in SF.

Advisory Board

Alma Hecht

Alma Hecht owns Second Nature Design, a sustainable landscape design practice, www.secondnature.bz. Alma has bio-dynamic and permaculture training, is a certified arborist, has a fine arts undergraduate and Masters of Arts in Landscape Design from The Conway School of Landscape Design. She is President of the San Francisco District Association of Professional Landscape Designers (APLD), an Advisory Board member of SFGRO, a Friend of Glen Canyon, and member of CNPS. She writes the column “In Glen Canyon Park” for the Glen Park News.

Mike Morlin

Mike began gardening in earnest at age 12 when he was hired to tend to the Dolores Street yard of family friends. He worked for several other clients in the ensuing years and ultimately earned a degree in Plant Ecology at San Francisco State University and accepted a job as a gardener in Golden Gate Park. Mike thought this would be temporary, but almost 30 years later, he retired from the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department as its Acting Superintendent, in charge of all parks’ maintenance and recreation centers. While Assistant Superintendent, Mike managed the Open Space funding for the community gardens program. He is intimately familiar with the wonderful network of community gardens throughout the City and hopes to promote improved and expanded access to resources for community gardens and gardeners.

Pam Peirce, Honorary Advisory Board Member

Pam Peirce has been a community gardener in San Francisco since she founded a garden on Folsom Street in 1975. When a house was built on that site, she moved to Dearborn Garden where she has been planting ever since. Pam was a founding board member and the first board president of the San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners. She earned a BA in botany at Butler University in Indianapolis and attended the University of Illinois as a graduate teaching assistant. She teaches in the department of Environmental Horticulture/Floristry at City College of San Francisco. Pam has written a number of books, including two regional books, Golden Gate Gardening: A complete guide to year-round food gardening in the Bay Area and Coastal California, Revised Edition (1998), and Wildly Successful Plants: Northern California (2004). She answers readers’ questions in her weekly SF Chronicle column “Golden Gate Gardener,” and also offers private garden coaching. She blogs at http://goldengategarden.typepad.com.