Cultivating Food Entrepreneurs: Patricia Loya of La Cocina

Patricia Loya is the Executive Director of La Cocina, a San Francisco Incubator Kitchen for Women.  The mission of La Cocina is to cultivate food entrepreneurs as they formalize and grow their businesses by providing affordable commercial kitchen space, industry-specific technical assistance and access to market opportunities.  They focus primarily on women from culturally diverse and immigrant communities.  Patricia earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California at Irvine and went on to earn a Masters of Education degree from Harvard University.  In 2001, Patricia was a fellow with the Executive Program for Nonprofit Leaders through the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.  In 2003, she participated in the Hispanics in Philanthropy Leadership Institute at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.Upon receiving her undergraduate degree, Patricia joined La Raza Centro Legal in San Francisco.  She later co-founded Ujima Unidos, a Saturday school for African American and Latino youth in Oakland, California.  She then went on to become the Executive Director of Centro Legal de la Raza where she worked closely with immigrant and low-income communities, assisted day laborers in forming their own worker association, and launched the flagship project, The Youth Law Academy. She became the Executive Director of La Cocina in 2009.A transcript of this interview is available on my blog Have Fun Do Good.