Meet the SFFMI Staff
Sarah Noss, Executive Director, is a native of Santa Fe. After graduating from Stanford University, she returned to Santa Fe, where she worked for many years in advertising as vice president of Creative Images. After a brief stint in Paris, she came back to the States and ended up in Chicago for almost a decade where she worked in advertising and promotions in the publishing industry. She returned to Santa Fe in the early 90s and worked for a variety of nonprofits as a writer, consultant, fundraiser and grant writer. She worked for four years at St. Vincent Hospital Foundation and was responsible for raising the money for the Healing Garden at the Cancer Treatment Center and for creating and funding the Doula Program of childbirth assistants. She helped to fund the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner unit at the hospital and worked on the capital campaign for the renovation of the OB/GYN unit. After the hospital, Sarah was the development director at Cornerstones Community Partnerships, an historic preservation nonprofit, and since July 2005 has been the executive director of the Santa Fe Farmers’ Market Institute. During her tenure, the $5 million Farmers’ Market Building in the Railyard was conceived, funded and completed. She also initiated the Micro Loan Fund at the Institute and the Institute’s movie series on food, agriculture and sustainability, which recently expanded to the University of New Mexico through the Southwestern Film Center. In 2007, the food stamp program for the Market began, and now the Institute is working in collaboration with New Mexico’s major land conservation nonprofits to preserve family farms and ranches in northern NM.
Richard Feldman, Office Manager/Financial Manager, has extensive experience in working with financial data on multiple levels, from maintaining a bookkeeping system, to budgeting, to auditing, to financial analysis. He has been office manager at LongView Asset Management, LLC and honed his nonprofit skills at the Fund for Folk Culture and the Santa Fe Railyard Community Corporation. He has also served as the Capital Outlay Team Member at the New Mexico State Legislature, giving him ample background in legislative machinations. Richard graduated with a BA in Economics from the University of Chicago and received his Masters of Library and Information Science from Simmons College in Boston, MA.
Sondra Gadell, Administrative Assistant/Building Use Coordinator, provides administrative support to the Executive Director at the Institute and oversees projects involving volunteers. She organizes the annual membership campaign, mailings and the raffle, and also coordinates building-related issues, such as tenant relations, building maintenance and janitorial. She administers the Food Stamp/EBT system at the Information Booth and is responsible for token sales at the Market and the bookkeeping required. She worked for many years as an office manager in public school settings and most recently was the administrative assistant at the University of Texas at Dallas where she coordinated many aspects of the writing and printing of the American Journal of Political Science. Sondra has a BA in Communications from the University of Oklahoma.
Sam Baca, Program Director, is a native of Santa Fe and has worked in the Santa Fe area for most of his professional career. He holds a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan, with an emphasis on community organizing. Right out of graduate school, he worked for three years for the United Farm Workers of America, helping to organize the nationwide boycott of grapes and lettuce leading to union contracts for farm workers. After returning to Santa Fe, he worked as a school social worker in the Santa Fe Public Schools, and later formed and led the steering committee that founded Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Santa Fe in 1980. He served as the agency’s first Executive Director for 8 years. He also spent 15 years working as Program Director for Cornerstones Community Partnerships, a nationally acclaimed Santa Fe-based program that helped organize community-based preservation projects to preserve buildings of cultural and historic significance, most notably adobe churches of northern New Mexico. Most recently, Sam worked for the New Mexico Behavioral Health Collaborative as the lead for the statewide Cross Agency Team that provides technical assistance and organizational support to Local Collaboratives. These are grassroots community groups of behavioral health stakeholders that advise the state on behavioral health policy and planning.
Joanne Smogor, Outreach and Communications, coordinates the Institute’s winter movie series, helps to write the newsletter, oversees the Institute’s Fall Fiesta gala, and works with the media to promote all Institute programs and events. She has an extensive background in nonprofit work. She is the former director of the northeast region of Student Conservation Association in Charlestown, NH. There, she directed an eight-state region for a national youth conservation organization, including programming, fund development, personnel management, strategic planning and public relations. She is also the founder and former executive director of Makin’ It Happen Coalition for Resilient Youth, where she also handled human resources and financial and volunteer management, in addition to fund development, training, PR, etc. Joanne has a Masters Degree in Community Health from the University of Illinois and received a BS in health and physical education from Southern Illinois University.
Maclovia Quintana, Americorps Intern, helps to administer the EBT program at the Market, assists with Fall Fiesta organization, and helps to keep track of the Micro Loan Fund, among other things. A native of northern New Mexico, she graduated from Yale University in May of 2011 with a BA in Environmental Studies. She concentrated her studies on sustainable food and agriculture, and wrote her undergraduate thesis on the connection between permaculture and traditional farming in northern New Mexico. She has worked for the Santa Fe Farmers Market for the past four summers, and worked for the Yale Sustainable Food Project for several years while in school. Maclovia will return to Yale in the fall of 2012 to pursue a Masters of Environmental Management, but is thrilled to be back in New Mexico in the meantime, and plans to settle here permanently after graduate school.
James Gould, Building Manager, oversees all the maintenance needs of the building, which he does at other venues around town, including the McCune Foundation facility. James is also a woodworker and artist.
Trinidad Alvarado-Ajcot, Janitorial Services, is our part time janitor and is responsible for keeping both the inside and outside of the building clean and tidy. He also does the snow removal during the winter, which has been keeping him very busy. When Trini is not here, he works at La Montanita Co-Op.
