Sallie Yoshida is the Executive Director and she provides overall strategic, operational, and financial direction for the organization. Sallie’s expertise encompasses the conceptualization of research aims, childhood obesity prevention, qualitative methodology, logic modeling, and strategic planning. She is the Principal Investigator of the California FreshWorks Fund Initiative, funded by the California Endowment, and is co-investigator for the Evaluation of the California Community Transformation Initiative (CA4Health).  Other research includes providing capacity building technical assistance for the Stanislaus County Community Transformation Grant and a RWJF-funded research titled Evaluating the Impact of New Beverage Nutrition Standards in Licensed Childcare in California. Sallie led the following research projects:  Evaluation of the Consortium to Lower Obesity in Chicago Children (CLOCC); Market Research, Environmental Scan and Ethnographic Research on the Use of Communication Technologies and Digital Media Related to Nutrition and Physical Activity (USDA/FNS); California Teachers Association and RWJF HER Commissioned Analysis research on water access and availability in schools, evaluation of childcare nutrition and physical activity environments for FIRST5 Santa Clara County, and the development of an evaluation plan for the Center for Collaborative Solutions Healthy Behaviors Initiative. She was also involved in the Healthy Kids Resource Center needs assessment, Stanislaus County Kaiser Permanente Community Health Needs Assessment, and evaluation of the Healthy Eating, Active Communities (HEAC), the Central California Childhood Obesity Prevention Program (CCROPP), Fit for Learning, and the CA School Health Leadership Institute.

In previous work, Sallie provided daily oversight and management for the Center for Advanced Studies in Nutrition and Social Marketing at UC Davis. She was also Nutrition Program Manager for the UC Cooperative Extension Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program for low income, multi-ethnic families in Fresno County.  In this capacity, she also chaired the county-wide childhood immunization coalition, worked on a number of child hunger awareness and fundraising projects, presented monthly health and nutrition information on local television, and collaborated on various research projects with UC nutrition specialists.  Sallie holds a doctorate in public health from the University of California at Berkeley, and has a special interest in social determinants of health and health disparities, particularly psychosocial stress and its disproportionate affect on low resource communities. She is also a registered dietitian.

Sallie is particularly proud of her 4-year consecutive participation as a California AIDS rider (now called Life Cycle) having raised nearly $15K for AIDS research.  She is actively involved in her two boys’ lives as co-Director for Daruma no Gakko (Japanese Summer School), school PTA President, school site council board member, and frequent field trip chaperone.