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Amy Payne:

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Amy Payne was born and grew up in La Palma, California. She volunteered from an early age with her parents and sisters at church and in the community.  In early elementary school, Amy and a group of friends started a campaign to raise money to feed hungry children in Africa. Amy’s love of food and cooking started as early as her volunteerism.  When she was in junior high she would put on elaborate five course meals for her parents’ friends using the fine china and every pan in the house!  After high school she went to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo and studied Engineering and minored in Dance.  After college she married her best friend, Sean Payne, and they started a family in Cypress, California.  Their two daughters, Mairi-Claire and Gianna, were born in 2007 and 2010 respectively. In 2008 they moved to Seal Beach, California to be closer to Sean’s office.  In 2011, challenged with a career choice, Amy left engineering to raise her daughters full-time. At the same time she felt a calling to help children with food insecurity in her local community. In 2012, she partnered with Food for the Soul in Texas to provide summer assistance to families in Cypress.    Since, Summer Harvest has expanded to service her local community of Los Alamitos Unified School District. 

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Joan Lutz:

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Joan is the volunteer coordinator and chief all around helper. She currently serves as President of her church congregation. She is a former teacher in Cypress School District.  She is the parent of 3 girls and 6 grandchildren. She enjoys taking photographs and making scrapbooks of travels and time with family. She enjoys working with the program because it sees a need that is met with feeding the families during the summer with fresh produce and the recipes to go with it.

 

Daniel Logue:

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Daniel brings 14 years of business management experience to Summer Harvest as the Director of Enterprise Software at DRG intelligent Computer Concepts, Inc. (“ICC”). At his position at ICC, Daniel was responsible for managing a team of developers, and also developing, designing, pricing, and bringing to market new web-based software products. These products include Orderwave, an enterprise level inventory and order management software suite for the fulfillment industry and Flippid.com, a consumer-based web-2.0 marketplace. Daniel has a strong IT skill-set, including software programming, database design, front-end engineering and UI design, graphic design, and desktop/network support, all of which he brings to Summer Harvest as the most technical member of the board. Daniel got involved with Summer Harvest after hearing about the mission of the organization.  Feeling strongly about meeting the needs of children in the community with food insecurity, Daniel has been involved ever since, and is the current secretary of the board.

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Denyse jennings:

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Denyse is a business professional with a diverse background ranging from professional sales, project management, and business operations. Currently living in Huntington Beach with her husband Lee of 16+ years and their 2 children Jace and Lacey, Denyse enjoys family bike rides to the beach, watching Lacey in her competitive cheerleading, Jace playing lacrosse, and supporting her local communities.  Denyse first became involved with Summer Harvest through her Church, Radiant, when they needed volunteers for food distributions. Coming from a single parent home, Denyse knows the struggles of food insecurities and going hungry often. After 3 years as a volunteer and with the expansion into the Fountain Valley Unified School District, it was the perfect opportunity to join the board and use her business knowledge and expertise to continue to help develop and grow this program.  Denyse can’t be more excited to be a part of this organization where she is so grateful to be able to get to know the recipients, see the smiles on their faces at each distribution, and hear the wonderful stories of what the groceries and recipes mean to them.  Best of all, she gets to share this opportunity with her family as many times you will see them volunteering right alongside her.​

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Bobby Gonzalez:

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Bobby is a local family man raised in Las Vegas and living in Southern California for the last couple of decades.  He’s spent 20 years of his professional life in the financial services industry and has occupied his spare time raising a family.  Bobby was drawn to Summer Harvest because as a child of a single parent when he was young, his was a family that suffered from food insecurity and benefited from the kindness of others.  Fortunately, Bobby and his family are in a place today where they are able to give back and that’s why you are likely to run into the whole family at a Summer Harvest fundraiser, packing, or distribution event.  

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LAURA RATH:

 

Laura brings two decades of experience in the non-profit sector. Both personally and professionally, her work is focused on improving the health, quality of life, and security of people of all ages. Laura first volunteered with Summer Harvest in the summer of 2020, wanting to respond to growing food insecurity and community need in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Summer Harvest’s mission is particularly important to her, as no one should have to live with hunger or choose between food and paying for basic needs like housing and health care. She has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to serving the community, through her work as Senior Program Officer at Archstone Foundation and as a member of the Board of Directors for Grantmakers In Aging and the Junior League of Orange County, California. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Science from the University of Southern California (USC) Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. She lives in Seal Beach, California with her husband and two darling daughters.