2025 Right to Food Learning and Action Fellow Spotlight: Em Settlecowski and Brizai Gomez Cortes
- Photini Kamvisseli Saurez
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
December 3, 2025
By Daniel Chian, National Right to Food Community of Practice Intern, Oberlin College
Meet Em Settlecowski and Brizai Gomez Cortes, two inspiring voices of the movement for food justice in Colorado and members of our Right to Food Learning and Action Fellowship. Em and Brizai are part of the team at Metro Caring, a leading anti-hunger organization in Denver, which is committed to remedying the immediate threat of hunger while also addressing its root causes.
We are incredibly grateful that both Em and Brizai took the time to share their stories about their early associations with food and how it has shaped the work they are doing today to support communities in Denver to claim their right to food.
A Jersey Girl’s path to food justice advocacy in Denver
Em hails from Central Jersey on the shore, and recalls the dueling influences of North and South Jersey as well as the neighboring cities of New York and Philadelphia on the region. While Em noted the economic disparity between the two regions, her father’s work in landscaping meant her family’s economic circumstances differed seasonally. She recalls summers as a time of abundance, spending time with her grandparents and enjoying the bounties of four acres and a large garden. While learning about growing, preparing, and preserving food, Em also developed a natural understanding of food as something that is meant to be shared.
This relationship with food shifted in Em’s college years. While maintaining a full course load, Em worked three or four jobs at a time to pay for her education. Financial demands were always present in her student experience and manifested in food insecurity. This period was also characterized by a deep sense of loss, with the passing of her grandparents and the sale of their land. After three years of studying environmental science and math at the University of Denver, the world of food justice was the last place Em thought she would find herself. However, it was then that she came in contact with Metro Caring, and began interning for them in her last year of school.
Em recalls that as she began working at Metro Caring, she felt a connection to food similar to that of her childhood summers. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted operations soon after she started. As a vital food distribution network, Metro Caring continued operating, but strict AM and PM shifts (split to prevent infection) meant that Em did not see some of her coworkers for the next two years. Quarantine restrictions have since eased, and Em has continued her work at Metro Caring, stepping into her new role as Food Access Manager.
Today, Em is committed to personal growth and passionate about her work. She is driven by the urge to reclaim her childhood relationship with food, and by the injustices communities experience when food is treated primarily as a commodity and community members as consumers.
Connecting Immigrant Rights to the Right to Food
Brizai grew up in southwest Mexico, and moved to Colorado at the age of nine. She has similarly positive memories of fresh food from a young age, most vividly, eating avocados straight from her grandmother’s tree. Having come to the U.S. as a DACA recipient, Brizai notes how her immigration status has defined a major part of her experience in the U.S., from having to pay to renew her status every other year, to being able to work but not enjoying important rights. Upon arriving in northeast Colorado, she encountered a very different food landscape: one dominated by industrial agriculture and the largest feedlots in the nation, where anything green was intentionally cultivated. Here, Brizai also experienced food insecurity. After her brother was deported, her family experienced economic instability and frequently visited food pantries.
Brizai worked with English Language Learners in northeast Colorado, supporting middle and high school students who were navigating the same systems she once had to navigate alone. But she came into the organizing world in 2017, when the termination of DACA was announced. Brizai reached out to a nonprofit fighting for immigrant rights, where she learned about the political and organizing landscape of Colorado and the state’s history of anti-immigration policy. Upon moving to the Denver metro area, and losing her education role due to the onset of COVID-19, she searched for work. Brizai recalled an “a-ha” moment during her interview with Metro Caring, in which she connected how deeply food is shaped by political choices. This left her with such excitement for her work that she hasn’t looked back since.
At our in-person Right to Food Learning and Action Fellows meeting in Portland, Oregon, this summer, Brizai made the distinction between advocates and organizers, “Advocates fight for people. Organizers fight with those most impacted. Advocacy can make a demand, but organizing builds the power to win it.” She shared that while her personal story was originally a point of shame, her work at Metro Caring helped her understand how immigration status, geography, policy, and food insecurity are intertwined and how political and common that experience is. Now, Brizai sees her family reflected in the people that come to Metro Caring, and she sees the possibility of a food system transformed, knowing that every small, organized step brings us closer to the world we deserve. Stepping into her power as an organizer has been the most fulfilling work she has ever done, and she looks forward to continuing to grow this movement in the years ahead.
Em and Brizai share a personal connection and deep commitment to their work. They are invaluable contributors to our discussion space, offering vulnerability and careful listening. We cannot wait to follow their journeys, and we hope you will as well.
We hope you will join us in celebrating Em Settlecowski and Brizai Gomez Cortes, two of our inaugural 2025 Right to Food Learning and Action Fellows!
Connect with Em and Brizai LinkedIn:
This is the third installment of the Right to Food Learning and Action Fellows Spotlight Series. See Erica Hall’s Fellow Spotlight and Carolina Rascon’s Fellow Spotlight for previous introductions to this year’s Fellows.