2019-2020 Green Fellows

2019-2020 Green Fellows

Gabriela Fontanesi

Student with long brown hair and a purple top smiles and reaches to cut grapes from vineyard.

Gabriela Fontanesi, originally from Los Angeles, graduated from UC Davis with a degree in Viticulture and Enology in 2020. Gabriela has worked at the UC Davis Student Farm for 2 years so it’s only natural she created a project associated with the Student Farm Vineyard. Over the 2019-20 academic year, Gabriela advanced social justice and sustainability on the Student Farm by making the vineyard, and training in sustainable viticultural practices accessible to a broader community of students, including food insecure students, students from underserved/underrepresented communities, other Student Farm interns and to the families/children of the workers in the Viticulture industry. To accomplish this goal she created a new paid internship on the student farm vineyard for students who cannot afford to participate in unpaid internships. This will also help to advance the sustainability of the vineyard by bringing in experienced vineyard workers who understand the ins and out of viticultural techniques.

Gabriela was supported in her work by her mentor James R Muck, Field Operations Coordinator at the UC Davis Student Farm, who also guided her on her Student Farm vineyard internship which sparked the inspiration for her fellowship project.

Read more about the inspiration and impact behind Gabriella's fellowship project and her vision for the future of the wine industry from her interview for wine blog, The Fizz, in this post.  

Destiny Padilla

Headshot of a student with medium-length brown hair and colorful earrings in front of a wall of ivy.

Destiny Padilla is a fifth year student from San Diego, CA majoring in Sustainable Agriculture & Chicanx Studies. Destiny has served as the former External Vice President within ASUCD’s Office of Advocacy & Student Representation, created workshops for the Chicanx/Latinx community on health, wellness, gender & sexuality and is a labor organizer with United Students Against Sweatshops. For her Green Fellowship project she created a guidebook for an autonomous student collective supported by her mentor Natalia Deeb Sossa, an Associate Professor in the Chicanx Studies Department.

At a 2019 Sustainable Living and Learning Communities meeting, students from various organizations and communities within the SLLC recognized the need for a Student Autonomous Collective within the master plan for the SLLC. With the support of her peers, Destiny took on the challenge to create an outline for the Student Autonomous Space that’s reflective of the needs from community members. She conducted research, facilitated focus groups and outreach specifically with marginalized students to develop a prototype, budget and vision plan of what the physical space will look like when built in the near future.

Destiny is hoping that this space will center the most oppressed people where voices are heard and highlighted, rather than a surface level space of inclusion.

This space could be used as a place to create lasting impactful change where members can develop radical work, coalition build and share knowledge while being grounded in the values of collective liberation.

Destiny's Third Space Booklet is a guidebook for the future of an autonomous student collective within the SLLC at UC Davis.