Christine Birdsong was appointed by Governor Newsom as Undersecretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Birdsong has worked in agricultural policy at the state and national level for 15 years.

She was previously Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Director of People and Culture for the Sun Valley Rice Company, where she handled state and federal regulatory compliance and corporate legal issues.

She has also served as General Counsel for the National Cotton Council of America, Counsel for the Committee on Agriculture for the United States House of Representatives and Federal Government Affairs Leader for CropLife America. Birdsong earned a Juris Doctor degree from the UC College of the Law, San Francisco, and is a UC Berkeley alumni.

Gary Nabhan's work focuses primarily on the interaction of biodiversity and cultural diversity of the arid binational Southwest. He is considered a pioneer in the local food movement and the heirloom seed saving movement.

He co-founded Native Seeds/SEARCH, a non-profit conservation organization that conserves more than 1800 regional Southwestern seed varieties to preserve and prioritize communities in the desert region.

Nabhan serves as the Kellogg Endowed Chair in Southwestern Borderlands Food and Water Security. There, he founded the Center for Regional Food Studies and catalyzed the initiative to have UNESCO designate Tucson, AZ as the first City of Gastronomy in the U.S.