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We would love to hear from you. Please contact us at deviledeggery@gmail.com.
Our Advisors
Ana is a San Francisco native living in Petaluma for the past 35 years and she has found many ways to be part of our lovely community. Ana is a lifelong learner, mother of 3, grandma of 3, married almost 40 years, a SRJC and UCSF alumnus and retired dental hygienist.
A guitar class reignited her love for playing music and for the past 10 years she has been part of different bands playing guitar, standup bass, electric bass and songwriting. She currently also sings to assisted living residents. Art has become a large part of her life and she has been exploring art in different forms, including pet portraits, landscapes, signs and delving into mixed media projects.
Teaching has come naturally to her, including running knitting classes for 10 years, teaching clinical dental hygiene, volunteer teaching pickleball to high schoolers and now teaching art at Meadow Grammar School.
Ashleigh is a mother, runner, yogi, artist and animal lover. She was born and raised in Petaluma and is now raising her own family next door in Sonoma Valley. Ashleigh finds therapy in creating, with an enthusiasm for restoration and upcycling. She enjoys cooking (mostly enjoys eating) whole nutritious foods and finds joy in feeding others.
Ashleigh has a passion for helping her fellow humans and is committed to equity and social justice. Ashleigh has a background in health and is currently leading a Covid response team, while simultaneously pursuing a degree in sociology. Ashleigh brings creativity, a passion for health, empathy, and a dark sense of humor to the Deviled Eggery community.
Iris was born in The Eggery, literally. Her dad grew up on the property then managed the restaurant and art space with his dad in the 70s. They turned it into a residence later in the decade and Iris’ parents moved in. Soon after, she was born in the bedroom for a planned home birth. Iris now lives in San Francisco with her husband, daughter, and labradoodle.
Iris is the Director of Sales for The Go Game - a company providing joy, laughter, and connection through virtual and in-person team bonding experiences for companies worldwide. Iris and her husband, Kirk, met at a weekly Swing dance event in San Francisco called The 9:20 Special. Three years later they became owners of the venue and ran it for 12 years - teaching thousands of dancers to Lindy Hop and creating an incredible dance community.
Julie currently works as a program analyst for the Environmental Protection Agency, and has a passion for the arts, gardening, and just about anything that involves mud, imagination, and connecting with others creatively.
Julie’s background includes pottery instruction and studio and gallery owner, aerobics and weight training instructor, and her current work involves grant policy and training. She has a B.A. in Psychology and an M.A. in Mental Health Counseling. Her particular talents are instigating shenanigans and volunteering creative (but questionable) ideas.
Katie is a wildlife biologist, born and raised in the Bay Area. She has been working in the field and collecting data since 2015. Her research has included the use of camera traps to study mammal movement, radio telemetry to learn about bat roost selection, GPS collars to give insight into coyote behavior, and adaptive habitat management strategies to help conserve a small population of burrowing owls. Katie educates the public about wildlife and how to safely coexist while conserving threatened and endangered species. When she's not working, she's camping in the Redwoods, going to see live music, and studying conservation detection dog training techniques. At the Deviled Eggery, Katie will develop a wildlife monitoring program and help tell the story of the animals living on the landscape.
Lamar is a retired data analyst who is rediscovering the joys of gardening and is focused on learning more about healthy soils and natural methods such as crop rotation, composting, and companion planting. She and her husband live off Middle Two Rock Road, just down the way from the Deviled Eggery. Besides gardening, other activities she enjoys in retirement include making quilts and other crafts to use up her fabric collection, hiking with friends and family, exercising, traveling, and spending time with family. She and her husband Rick have three grown children, and last year her oldest son and his wife made them grandparents to grandson Austin. In her prior life she worked at FICO and InfoCentricity for 34 years, doing a combination of sales, training, data analysis, credit modeling, strategy design, and product management to build analytic software. She enjoys applying her people and analytic skills to new challenges, such as volunteering with Una Vida, working with various groups at United Methodist Church, and participating in events at Petaluma Woman's Club. She looks forward to helping build the Garden Network and getting more healthy food in the hands of people who can use it.
Melinda was raised in the South Bay and landed in Marshall in 2016. She is a flock manager and soil steward out at Barinaga Ranch, where they raise a variety of wool sheep breeds. In between her job duties she likes to study pollinators, raise honeybees, and dabble in all kinds of chicken projects.
Melinda is passionate about feeding people, and is stoked to have her garden registered with the D'Eggery Garden Network and care for her neighbors in this way! Her favorite hobby at the moment is trail running, and she loves sharing those miles with her pals and exploring beauty all around the county and coast. She has a reverence for life and how it gets expressed through people, story, and place. Melinda has been a fan of the D'Eggery and its themes from the beginning, and can hardly wait for a deeper connection with this community!
Milagros is Peruvian, has resided in California since 1993; married to Erik Ott and is the mother of 3 boys (26, 24 and 18). Milagros is an Early Childhood Specialist and has been the Executive Director at Multicultural Child Development Center for 10 years, a state preschool program for low-income families in Santa Rosa. She is a Teaching Pyramid coach (a program that provides support to ECE teachers and families to prevent challenging behaviors), and she is a proud Rotarian of the Rotary Club of Santa Rosa East/West, the community service chair and board member. Milagros loves photography, traveling, crafting and spending quality time with family and friends.
Niki is the mother to an amazing son (now 37) and adores every minute she gets doing anything with his busy family, especially her 2 grand babies! Her father (with his mother and brother) fled war in Russia, and grew up on a dairy ranch in Fallon, where they lived with their sponsor. Niki was raised in both Fallon and Petaluma, and then raised her son in Petaluma, where her grandson was later born.
For the last 13 years she's lived in Penngrove, where she enjoys growing food, propagating trees and succulents, creating from found items, playing with all things wool, and nurturing her ever-growing, diverse chicken flock along with her pittie, Tonka. She also enjoys photography, rockhounding, and caring for and gleaning from feral fruit trees. She tries to live life with the smallest possible footprint, with a focus on human rights, wasting nothing, sharing more, and uplifting others. She's done trash cleanups since her son was little, and now, with her grandkids. The ocean is her soul and has always been where she reflects, recharges, and resets. It's also where she combs the beach for agates, driftwood, and amazing rocks to tumble and create with. She also loves time on the Russian River, in redwood forests, and anywhere animals are involved!
Saill is the mom of a delightful young adult, as well as a chicken farmer and part time web developer. She lives in Two Rock, kind of right down the road from the Deviled Eggery. In former lives she dabbled in operating system virtualization, machine translation, energy efficient buildings, and astrophysics. She loves foraging for food, milking goats, tasting things she’s never tasted before, googling for how-to tips, and creating spreadsheets and explaining them to whomever will listen. Lately she has been fascinated by the history of fire and the natural landscape, so she earned her Wildland Firefighter II certification in order to participate in prescribed and cultural burns with the Good Fire Alliance. She is a soil health fanatic. She brings curiosity, a love of plumbing, and experience with chickens and goats to the Deviled Eggery Community.
Sallie is a retired teacher, a traveler, an artist, and good trouble maker. She grew up on a chicken ranch in Penngrove, graduated Petaluma HS, and then left. She sought out people, places, and possibilities around the world, returning home 10/16/2020. Sallie has lived abroad in Thailand, Malaysia where she served in the Peace Corps, China where she taught, and in Paris and Mexico learning the language and loving the culture.
In 2016 Sallie flew to Greece and stayed 8 months teaching and also interviewing refugees who arrived there from Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. Her interviews are in her book, HEAR ME. She’s found lots has changed since she left Petaluma years ago. She is excited about all that’s new and is very happy to work with Deviled Eggery to help ensure the joys of Petaluma come to everyone lucky enough to live here.
Wendy is a multimedia artist and educator. She has worked in San Francisco community-based organizations since 2003, supporting youth who experience oppressive systems while struggling to live in poverty and navigate the world with cognitive difficulties and mental illness. Wendy facilitates art projects and youth leadership opportunities that address social justice issues and encourage self expression. Since 2012, Wendy has produced Noodle Mania, a social practice art project that creates public art-making parties, audio documentaries, and a zine. Since 2017, Wendy has served as an ARTerian, staffing the artist resource center that facilitates the placement and display of art in Black Rock City. Wendy joins the team at the Deviled Eggery to foster creativity and collaboration, encourage play, and build community.
About Us
I’m MB…
I’ve been lucky to experience many cultures, locations, & relationships (though only one true love #ERIC!), and I believe the themes we selected capture my passions perfectly. These values have shown up in high school as an Earth Club & Amnesty International leader, in the Philippines (as well as up and down the east coast of the US) where I conducted art & human rights workshops as a college student for Amnesty International, in Greece where I worked in Middle East and African refugee camps, in urban and rural schools in the Bay Area where I’ve worked as a special ed teacher for over 20 years, and in my advocacy for mental health parity. Along the way, art has always been at my side (you can see my work, along with Eric’s, at www.lelanddesign.com). When I told a friend about the Deviled Eggery, she said, “You’ve been planning for this project your whole life.” So here we are, opening day, and the project has been in the works for nearly 50 years.
… and I’m Eric
a technology consultant, artist and activist. I started and run a company focused on public transit and nonprofit technology projects. When I’m not doing that, I’m usually in my garage using high voltage electricity to burn old wood objects that I find at local thrift stores. It’s called fractal art - the technique creates tree-like burn designs. I love the process of taking someone else’s giveaways and refurbishing them into art pieces, and have been able to raise money for some favorite local nonprofits (Una Vida, Trout Unlimited, ReLeaf Petaluma) with my work. I grew up on a citrus and avocado orchard in Southern California, and am very excited to live where we can grow gardens & fruit trees, rewild the meadow, watch the deer and badgers, and live more sustainably. Like MB, I feel well aligned with the themes we chose for the Deviled Eggery, as my other passions have revolved around environmental and human rights projects (including river restoration, increasing tree canopy, mental health crisis response advocacy, and immigrant and refugee assistance both locally and abroad).
Let’s Work Together
However you approach the concept of community resilience, this space can offer you a place to share your thoughts, listen to others, learn from our past and create positive programs in Petaluma and beyond. Fill out our volunteer sign-up form if you would like to volunteer, donate, or partner with us. We can’t wait to work with you!