Ellee has been involved in grassroots struggles for food justice for more than 15 years.  In 2005, she joined the International Rescue Committee and worked with refugee and immigrant communities and partner organizations to establish San Diego’s first permitted urban farm, first SNAP accessible farmers’ market, and one of the nation’s first farmers’ market incentive programs.  In 2010, Ellee became the IRC’s national Technical Advisor for Food Security and Agriculture where she has assisted offices in 20 U.S. cities to establish, scale up, and refine their food and farming projects.  

The role has helped her to improve her skills as a facilitator and fundraiser, to better understand the elements of a feasible and fundable project, and to help keep the people behind the projects inspired, focused, and action-oriented.   In her tenure at IRC, Ellee has attracted more than $5 million in federal and private funds to New Roots programs. 

She also helped execute the Cultivating Food Justice conference series and was an inaugural member of the San Diego Food System Working.  Ellee co-founded Solidarity Farm, a small, diversified fruit and vegetable operation in 2012 and began exploring carbon sink farming methods after a historic heat event in 2015 decimated their crops. In 2019, she helped co-host a Carbon Sink Convergence that inspired the establishment of Foodshed San Diego, a farmer-owned cooperative dedicated to ecological, climate-smart farming and lifting up small farm businesses to nourish San Diego’s historically marginalized communities. She is now Foodshed’s Operations Coordinator and works for the County of San Diego CalFresh Healthy Living Team as a Small Farm Aggregation Specialist. Ellee has a MA in Community and Regional Planning from the University of Oregon.