Meet Kris

My family came to Paso Robles in the 1970s when I was a young girl. I was a 4-H member, a Pioneer Player, and a Paso Robles High School graduate. I earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Cal Poly. I was a single mom, a baseball mom, and a Bearcat mom. 

A few years after graduating from Cal Poly, I led the Vineyard Team, a local non-profit dedicated to sustainable farming in six Central Coast counties. As its founding Executive Director for over 20 years, the board entrusted me with the nuts and bolts of budgets, staffing, and research and education programs. We listened to stakeholders and fostered collaboration among people with different viewpoints: government agencies, community members, environmentalists, and large and small farmers. I’m especially proud of our Spanish language education programs for vineyard workers, and a college scholarship program for the children of those laborers.

You might see me volunteering in the community in different ways: set up, clean up, serving at community and non-profit events; community education and outreach; or connecting to the schools through committees and volunteering.