Food Sovereignty & Medicine Coordinator
Alex Zubia, also known as “Xef,” is a chef and food justice advocate born and raised in Fresno, CA (Yokutch Land). He attended The California Culinary Academy in San Francisco (Ramaytush Ohlone land) in 2007 and discovered his passion for cooking through his love of eating. After witnessing members of his community suffering from diet-related issues while working as a Patient Liaison at Community Regional Medical Center’s Emergency Room from 2008-2015, Xef opened his own food truck. His food truck focused on providing healthier, farm-to-fork versions of familiar foods.
In 2015, Xef moved to Santa Barbara (Chumash Land) to further his skills as a chef. During his time there, he discovered that some of the produce he was cooking with came from Fresno. This realization led him to question why he never saw this same produce available in his hometown. In 2021, Xef returned to Fresno to fight for food justice, mentor young fathers, system impacted youth, and created the Food Sovereignty & Medicine Program at Fresno Barrios Unidos. His goal is to promote food sovereignty and bring his community back to cooking and eating their indigenous foods, which are abundant in the Central Valley. In March of 2022 he started working for Transition US as a network organizer and quickly adopted certain principles like ITEK Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous Permaculture Design as a way to combat the biggest problem which is soil erosion and lack of biodiversity. Which will be crucial to climate restoration for our next seven generations. Xef and all his community are literally planting seeds for the next seven generations.
