Dr. Vanessa Quezada (she/her/hers) is a Kickapoo/Coahiltecan/Chichimeca/Spanish Chaski (messenger/runner), pharmacist, and holistic planning facilitator. She works at intersections of native traditional healing, food sovereignty and renewable energy to build life-giving systems. Vanessa is guided by 20+ years of social justice community work and her training in Indigenous sustainability community design with the Traditional Native American Farmers Association. She is driven to co-create spaces where teams can unite their strengths and creatively strategize to achieve their potentials and cultivate joy along the way.  She is Co-CEO of Sana Roots Co, a non-profit organization that offers culturally responsive mental health and life skills development programs to build a community of care, revive traditional food ways, and activate community leadership in Yanawana (San Antonio & Central Texas area). 

She is committed to dismantling oppression, deconstructing and rebuilding food and healing systems to protect and serve life on this planet. Vanessa is thrilled to be a facilitator-trainer for the Texas Environmental Justice, Equity, and Democracy Coalition where she works with numerous people that she looks up to. She continues to support coordination of the intercontinental indigenous Peace and Dignity Journeys prayer run that strengthens unity on our sacred lands. In 2022, she shared "Food is Medicine" courses for emotional resilient support in collaboration with the University of Iowa for American Indians/Alaskan Natives across the nation. She is inspired by the shared holding of space for vicarious healing where the power of community unveils our ancestral memory to being in right relations and living out our sacred responsibilities.