Meet The Team

Jahnavi is a transformational catalyst with a passion to create leadership and compassion for climate solutions and social innovation. She believes we live in the stories, and the narrative we build, shapes the reality we live in eventually. In addition to her formal degree in Design for Sustainability, Product design and electrical engineering, she is a certified Permaculture designer and strategic foresight practitioner. She brings in her expertise in strategy, systems thinking and connecting dots through her diverse background for building collaborations and storytelling.

Jahnavi holds a Spiritual and poetic approach towards life and it reflects in her work and the community she has been developing. She has been actively volunteering with climatedesigners.org for building climate leadership and hosting podcast,  with Savannah tree foundation and Trees Atlanta to build pocket forests and forest restoration activities, with Savannah Urban garden alliance to teach gardening to elementary students, Harambe house to work on climate justice and equity for the local community, with our city forests in San Jose to plant trees at community schools, teach systems thinking as a guest lecturer and mentor students to develop a regenerative approach to life and work.

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She has diverse experience of working as a sustainability design strategist with The city of Savannah at the grass-root level to develop social innovation and equity frameworks. Her work with Dhana inc focused on developing behavior change towards conscious clothing consumption, circular economy and community engagement. She has consulted corporates like Coca-Cola, Volvo and Heineken to inculcate sustainability mindset through business strategies.

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For Jahnavi, “From Soil to Soul” is a personal journey to regenerate and restore love, our relationship with land, healing, food justice & equity, nutrition through the medium of storytelling, systems thinking and building global communities.

Ankur Shah is a geospatial data scientist at a startup called Climate Engine where he uses satellite data to assess various climate hazards and monitor environmental issues. He is also the Director of Operations at Mycelium @sporehsv, where he helped design a sustainable food system vision for 2050 for Huntsville, Alabama and installed automated raised beds in a few school gardens. He has also taught workshops on food sustainability and the circular economy, and brings in a wealth of knowledge and connections to the project. He brings scientific perspectives to the project from his academic and work background in environmental science. He is also studying biomimicry @arizonastateuniversity and plans to create sustainable urban design solutions using lessons from nature.

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Having grown up in Mumbai and witnessing starvation, malnutrition and food insecurity along with severe air and water pollution first hand, Ankur is highly motivated to implement systemic solutions which foster food sovereignty for a just present and future.

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For Ankur, ‘From Soil to Soul’ is a labor of love which is a personal journey to learn and highlight systemic solutions to the most pressing food related issues and ultimately inspire all of us to enable the creation of locally adaptable, resilient, and just food systems.

Margaret is a Hong Kong designer and filmmaker now based in unceded Kizh, Tongva, Tataviam and Chumash land (greater Los Angeles). Her passion in environmental activism led her to starting Studio SAKA, a social change & climate-focused creative studio. She is a certified California Naturalist, and the chapter co-lead for Climate Designers Los Angeles, a community of creatives dedicated to climate action.

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Margaret is deeply rooted in community engagement, forging connections with local BIPOC food activists and farmers. She co-created the Urban Farmers’ Almanac, a LA sustainable living guide, with urban planner Jamie Hwang (@shegrowscities), Climate Designers Global, and Margie Winkstern (@margiewinks). Volunteering at local urban farms along with her collaboration with LA Compost over the past three years has deepened her involvement with food justice.

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‘From Soil To Soul’ to her means cross-pollination among local communities, Indigenous Peoples, governments, and corporations - to radically change the current food system. To reestablish our innate connection with the soil and land - what nourishes and sustains us.

Eldon Arena is a Filipino cinematographer and editor based in unceded Tataviam and Chumash land (greater Los Angeles). As the co-founder of Studio SAKA, he led various film productions including collaborations with LA Compost, The Learning Garden, and the Restaurant Voices series by Off Their Plate, a nonprofit supporting local restaurants and healthcare workers under the COVID-19 crisis. He has extensive knowledge in Cinema Cameras (RED, Sony, and Canon), and is a drone + FPV pilot. He is passionate about using his filmmaking expertise to tell meaningful stories around the world. He is the cinematographer for this project, oversees the cinematic execution on set, provides direction to interviewees to elicit authentic performances, and creates a safe space for the interviews. He also advises on the story construction, film pacing and timing, and the emotional impact and journey of the series.

Rachel is a recovering advertising executive turned creative producer with a passion for triple-bottom-line filmmaking, valuing people & planet in balance with profit. As an account executive in NYC, she cut her teeth on conceptualizing and executing a creative vision – but quickly became disillusioned by prevailing corporate greed & waste (of time, energy, and materials), sparking a yearning for more meaningful work and opening her eyes to one of the many systems stacked against people trying to live closer to the land and in community. 

She moved to LA and honed her skills in design and storytelling while working as a video producer across film, TV, theater, and live events. She is an MFA graduate of USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program, where she produced the award-winning Afro-Latina disco musical Wish Upon A Disco Ball. Since 2021, she’s produced the live comedy show BIPOCalypse, dedicated to amplifying the voices of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ comedians — part of Netflix Is A Joke Fest in 2024. Notable screen credits include AMEND: THE FIGHT FOR AMERICA (2021), MAINSTREAM (2021), PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (2020), and VENOM (2018). Currently, she works in literary management at Cartel Entertainment, helping represent writers, directors, and artists across animation and live-action. 

Influenced by her mixed Latine, Indigenous, and European background, she is dedicated to producing media that reveals and uplifts underrepresented communities, ideas, and norms. Her work spans genres and forms, with the connective link of affecting positive social change — amid diversity, environmental consciousness, community-building, and mental health — while being as entertaining as possible to reach a broad audience. 

For Rachel, “From Soil to Soul” is a journey of discovering what is right under our feet but kept just out of view of modern society. By giving a voice to the multitudes of activists, leaders, healers, and entrepreneurs defying the status quo to live healthier, happier, and more attuned lives with nature, we can demystify what may ordinarily feel othering & build momentum for paradigm-shifting systemic change.

Owen Dubeck is a documentary filmmaker, specializing in telling stories that drive tangible change. His films have raised $1 million+ for social causes, influenced legislation, and have been screened to audiences across the country.


Owen’s documentaries include Free to Care (Audience Award at Austin Film Festival), Paperboy Love Prince Runs for Mayor (Big Sky FF 2023), and Abundance (Audience Award at Sun Valley FF). He has also worked in the editorial department on The Undocumented Lawyer (Tribeca FF 2020), The Urchin Diver (Santa Barbara FF), and Five Years North (Full Frame 2020).


In the early days of the pandemic, Owen helped found and lead a non-profit initiative called The Farmlink Project. Through creative viral marketing campaigns, national television features, and the promotion of original video/photo content, The Farmlink Project scaled from a small non-profit of college students into a nationally recognized movement that has delivered over 200 million meals.