The Quake City Portal

QCP #033 | Christopher Renfro, Founder of the Two Eighty Project|The Way of Natural Winemaking and Re-imagining a Thriving Society

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Christopher Renfro (instagram, additional links) is the founder of the Two Eighty Project, an organization “dedicated to building a sustainable food and wine community that nourishes every member of the local economy and ecosystem.” It began with his love and curiosity for learning about wine and implementing his knowledge into a community farm visible from the Highway 280 Freeway heading out of San Francisco.

SHOW NOTES | MENTIONS
SEG 1 – Castles and Finding True Freedom in the outdoors

SEG 2 – Financial Illiteracy, The Underlying Reality of Food Service, Ambitions for 280

the Food Service Industry and Humanity
Black Wallstreet
Tulsa Oaklahoma
Critical Race Theory
Think Tank

SEG 3 – Rethinking the Food Industry Models, Baselines of Comfort

Food Security in San Francisco
Feed the People Collective
Shared Cultures Miso
Co-op Businesses
Rethinking the Comfort Baseline
Homelessness, Youth, Elders

Contains a snippet from Good Morning America | Patagonia founder donates company to fight climate change, Sept. 15, 2022

QCP #032 | Pam Baker, Founder of the Women’s Coaching Alliance | How Women Can Mind the Gap in Leadership, and the Foundations of great Organizations

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Pam Baker (womenscoachingalliance.org) is dedicated to empowering, encouraging, and developing more young women to become examples of leadership, rather than the exception, through coaching youth sports and giving back to the community.

With her own unique leadership, she founded the Women’s Coaching Alliance, inspired and built upon the memory of her late husband Doug Friedman, who made his transition in 2020.

Her aim for great leadership and work ethic brought her to places like Genentech and Johnson and Johnson, where she worked as district sales manager, project manager, and project director, as well as Vice President and CEO for several startups in the healthcare and investment sectors. She is a woman dedicated to “minding the gap,” a British expression she likes to use that shows her willingness to explore the unfamiliar and help light the way for everyone, especially women and future leaders of the world.

PART 1 – What is the Women’s Coaching Alliance? | Exploring the Unfamiliar | Molding Leadership

Empowering women through leadership roles
Intentions
Personal History
Process | Corporate vs Startup
How coaching translates into the real world

PART 2 – The Power of Coaching and giving back to community

Conflict resolution
Career Paths as Jungle Gyms
Lou Holtz 3 Questions

PART 3 – Doug’s Coaching Legacy | What we learn from grief |

What we can learn from grief
What is the enviornment we’re preparing for?
Pam’s Favorite Leaders
- Indra Nooyi, Pepsi Co.
- Melinda Gates
- Brene Brown
On aging
On happiness

QCP #031 | Karen Nani Apana, Ph.D. | The Questions We Live With, Higher Worlds, and How to Find Stillness in Biography Work

Prisma Coloring Courtesy of Edwin Hacking

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Dr. Karen Apana is one of the founding members of the San Francisco Waldorf School – first founded in 1978. She has been a lifetime teacher, mentor, and student of Anthroposophy for over 40 years. For over 25 years, she has been teaching biography work and has a private practice for biography counseling in San Francisco. She also holds frequent biography workshops all over the Bay Area, and although she is now retired as a Waldorf teacher, she still mentors and advises teachers in the Bay Area and all over the globe.

She was born and raised in San Francisco, and as you’ll find out in this conversation, she is a local, cosmic gem. In this conversation, you’ll learn about Anthroposophy and some of the philosophies behind Rudolph Steiner. She also offers a firsthand account of someone born into a generation of San Francisco coming into social consciousness during the 1960s, which eventually set the stage for many spiritual seekers, creators, activists, artists, and life enthusiasts today.

QCP #030 | Chefs Matt Levin + Michael Greuel of The Refuge Restaurants | The Pathos of Pastrami, Survival Mode in the Food Service Industry

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Website: THE REFUGE
Instagram: @refuge_pastrami
Refuge on Diners Drive-ins and Dives

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In 2008 Matt Levin, his wife Melanie, and his good friend Michael Greuel opened The Refuge Restaurant. At the time, The Refuge was a small restaurant focused on french wines, Belgian beers, and house-made, hand-sliced pastrami sandwiches. Since 2008 their popularity has exploded. Customers have waited up to four hours to sit and dine with them. Fifteen years later, they streamlined the process and opened up two more locations along the way, one in Menlo Park, and the other in San Mateo. They both have over 25 years of experience in the food service industry.

They both share their experiences running three restaurants during the pandemic and what they’ve learned from it.

QCP #029 | Dan Griffiths, founder of The Church of Clown | Praising Folly, A Peek into the Toolshed and The Life of a Performance Artist

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SAY HELLO TO DAN!
Website: http://www.dangriffiths.us/
Kapoot Clown Theatre Skit Video
How Much – Created and Performed by Dan Griffiths
Donut Goat at the Barber Shop

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Dan Griffiths is a multi-talented, experimental performance artist, award-winning theatre director, teacher, and founder of the first Church of Clown in San Francisco. He founded the Clown Workshop, Clown Zero, and KAPOOT Clown theatre. Some of his recent gigs include teaching clown at The Wu Qiao International Circus Festival in Shijiazhuang, China. He also did work as a clown doctor and trainer for the Big Apple Circus and a director of CLOWN ZERO, a Medical Clowning Unit residence at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital.

For almost 35 years, since 1988, he has performed original theatrical works across the country and around the world. He studied at the Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre and has served on the faculty Clown Conservatory San Francisco, The School for Mime Theater, Columbia College Chicago, Roosevelt University, Indiana University Northwest, and Academy of Art University. Dan holds an M.A. in Experimental Performance from New College of California and an M.F.A in Interdisciplinary Art from the California Institute of Integral Studies.

QCP #028 | Sophia Cassella, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Athlete | The Inner Game of Training, How to Optimize Mat Time, and Life as a Student-Athlete

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Instagram | @sophiacassellabjj

Sophia Cassella is a 22-year-old brown belt from New Jersey, under Jason Rau. She’s trained with some of the greatest minds that helped change the sport today in what some people call the renaissance of Jiu Jitsu.

She commutes hours and hours every day from New Jersey to New York to train with some coaches and grapplers in the sport who are considered to be the best to ever coach and compete – John Danaher, Gordon Ryan, Gary Tonon, Renzo Gracie, and all of the greats that drop in there to train.

QCP 027 | Souhad A. Zaki, Economist | Understanding the State of Global Food Security

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Souhad Abou Zaki is a Curious Economist and a Rural Development Enthusiast. She is currently a Senior Admissions officer residing in Lebanon at Notre Dame University, Louaize. Souhad works as a Lecturer in Economics, teaching undergrad courses in Microeconomics, Managerial Economics, and International Economics. She is also a Research Consultant and Proposal Writer for Rural Entrepreneurs, helping conduct research on rural development-related topics, which include women’s economic empowerment, food security, and social entrepreneurship. She holds a Degree in Economics from the American University of Beirut and a master’s in Agricultural Economics and Development. She is currently pursuing another degree in food security.

QCP #026 | Julie Rogers of TLC Transitional Life Care | On TLC, End of Life, Working with Grief, and Dharma

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Julie Rogers is the Founder and Director of TLC Transitional Life Care, a Vajrayana Buddhist non-profit organization dedicated to the education and support of individuals and their families during the end-of-life transition. This program is centered in the SF Bay Area and southern Oregon, and is available online and via Zoom. She is a writer, author, mother, educator, and administrator, and has been a caregiver and hospice volunteer, as well as a Vajrayana (Tibetan) Buddhist for almost 40 years.

QCP #025 | Jairus Ferrer, Agricultural Entrepreneur | How the Youth are Taking on the Food Crisis in the Philippines

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REACH OUT TO JAI

https://www.ifarms.ph/

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Jairus Ferrer is a agricultural entreprenuer from Philippines. With family roots in Mindanao, the southernmost region of the Philippines, he decided to leave the congested, fast-paced city after thirteen years in favor of a more steady-paced, semi-rural, widely untapped area to get in touch with nature and get involved in economic development in rural communities.

QCP #024 | Martin Jay Ruiz | Roll, Fall, Get Up: The Way of Wrestling and Skating

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Martin Jay Ruiz is someone that found his way on a skateboard and later on to the wrestling mat as a troubled youth. At an early age, he found the blank canvases of the skate deck and the wrestling mat to be the wide-open spaces that allowed his soul the room for infinite expansion. To this day, his heart never lost its passion for the two mediums.

He came from the streets of Santa Maria, California, pulled to the magnetic energy of San Francisco – a pilgrimage for skaters because of its steep, long, concrete hills that can send one bombing down a dance between weightlessness and death.

As a former collegiate wrestler for SF State, he became the wrestling coach for Lowell High School, one of the most prestigious public high schools in the United States. Under his tutelage, he’s coached both boys and girls to multiple state championships. Martin also coaches wrestling to adults at Fight Culture Gym in Daly City; he earned his Blue Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and is still an active competitor at thirty-three.