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Our Team

Eliot Feenstra, Project Manager

Eliot Feenstra (he/they) is a long-time community organizer, facilitator, performer, teacher, poet, and gardener. He grew up in Pittsburgh, PA and currently lives and works in rural southwestern Oregon.
During COVID, he worked with the Rogue Action Center to develop the LGBTQ+ Listening Project, a community organizing hub for rural LGBTQ+ folks in Josephine & Jackson counties. As a facilitator, he trains people to lead reflective dialogues with Oregon Humanities. He is the co-artistic director of Beyond Boom & Bust, an incubator for community-based arts projects that use theatre to explore economic and social issues in rural southwestern Oregon. He is also the co-chair of the Governance Committee for the Queer Data Design Project, an emergent statewide research project with LGBTQIA2S+ community in Oregon.
Eliot holds an MA in Performance Studies from York University; he also studied social practice at Portland State University and has a BA in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Chicago. He lives on an old commune in Takilma, OR with his wife, Sophie, and cat, Antigonick. 

Tiff Ganir, Project Associate

Tiffany Ganir (she/they)  was born in the Philippines and grew up on the island of Oahu, Hawaii. She moved to Oregon in 2013 and received a BS in Public Health and an MS in Adult Learning from Portland State University. Tiff participates in youth, student, and migrant grassroots organizing with the Filipino community. She was previously an academic and career advisor at PSU and teaches an academic skills course to incoming freshmen. Her hobbies include gardening/ plants, trying and cooking new food and water sports when the weather is nice.

Sarah Giles, Project Manager 

Sarah began working for the National Policy Consensus Center in 2007 and currently is a project manager for Oregon's Kitchen Table.  She also researches and writes on a range of issues related to collaborative governance, and has taught a collaborative governance capstone course at Portland State. She was previously a Research Assistant at Oregon Health and Sciences University. From 2002-2006 Sarah taught writing at the University of Arizona where she also received her MFA in Creative Writing. Sarah holds a BA from Vassar College and was a Fulbright Scholar in Germany, where she taught English to elementary and secondary level students.  Sarah gardens and loves craft projects of all kinds, especially with her two sons.

Wendy Willis, Director of Civic Engagement

Wendy is the Director of Civic Engagement at Portland State University's National Policy Consensus Center, where Oregon's Kitchen Table is housed, and the Executive Director of the national non-profit Kitchen Table Democracy. Wendy is a national leader in the field of civic engagement and citizen-centered decision-making.  Prior to joining PCI/NPCC, Wendy was the Executive Director for City Club of Portland, one of the most venerable civic organizations in the country.   She has also served as an Assistant Public Defender for the District of Oregon and a law clerk to Chief Justice Wallace P. Carson, Jr. of the Oregon Supreme Court.  Wendy is also a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum Oregon, a poet, and the mother of two young daughters.  She graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law Center and holds a B.A. from Willamette University.

Oregon’s Kitchen Table is a program of the College of Urban and Public Affairs at Portland State University and is housed within the National Policy Consensus Center.