Indian Business and Professional Women and Silicon Valley Reads (siliconvalleyreads.org) invites you to join our annual book reading event held at India Community Center.
This year’s selection is the New York Times bestseller “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” written by Michael Pollan; the well-known author of books and articles about the areas where the human and natural worlds intersect: food, agriculture, gardens, drugs, and architecture. This book is an attempt to explain the rise of "nutritionism" that has vastly complicated the lives of American eaters without doing anything for their health, except possibly making it worse.
Join us for a stimulating panel discussion on the themes of In Defense of Food featuring a dietician, a nurse, an ED of a Heart Center, and a director of Farmers’ Market Association. The event will be moderated by a writer and author who has also been a panelist for our past book reading event.

Panelists:
Lisa Richardson:MA, Registered Dietician
Liz Kniss: SCC Board of Supervisor, District 5
Ashish Mathur:Co-Founder and Executive Director, South Asian Heart Center
John Silveira: Director, PacificCoastFarmers’ Market Association

Moderator:
Jana McBurney-Lin: Author of My Half of the Sky

Date: Sunday, February 21st, 2010
Time: 2.00 pm to 4.00 pm
Place: India Community Center (ICC)
525 Los Coches Street
Milpitas, CA 95035
For directions, please visit indiacc.org
Cost: Free, RSVP at the earliest; limited seating available.

For more information about the book and the author, visit siliconvalleyreads.org
For RSVP or any questions, email us at info@ibpw.net

Bios:

Liz Kniss: SCC Board of Supervisor, District 5

As a Registered Nurse, Liz has worked in hospital care, as a public health nurse for San MateoCounty , and a school nurse for CupertinoUnion School District . Kniss then applied her skills as a Marketing and Communications Manager at Sun Microsystems, Inc. until 1999. Her many years of community service include being a member of Rotary, service on the League of Women Voters Board of Directors, the United Way Board of Directors, and numerous advisory councils and foundations dedicated to community betterment.
Liz received a B.S. in Nursing and a MPA in Public and Health Care Policy. Her work history includes both the health care arena, and the high tech arena as a manager at Sun Microsystems. This blend of health and business arenas has enabled her leadership in local government and supported such efforts as launching a mobile mammography unit to service under insured and uninsured women in her County.

Lisa Richardson: MA, Registered Dietitian

For 25 years, Lisa has used her graduate degree in Exercise Science as well as her Registered Dietitian (RD) credentials to counsel both groups and individuals regarding fat loss, sports nutrition and fitness. She is a popular lecturer at local corporations (Cisco, Google, Yahoo), and a frequent contributor to NBC 11 health segments. She is the proud mother of an 18 year old daughter, 8 year old son, and is co owner of the Fitness Clinic of Los Gatos.

Ashish Mathur: Co-Founder and Executive Director, South Asian Heart Center

Ashish Mathur, an enterprise software executive with over 25 years of industry experience, is a co-founder and executive director of the South Asian Heart Center , a non-profit response to the severe and malignant epidemic of heart disease in the South Asian community. He has served on the Boards of Bay Area startups, and on the executive teams at Selectica, Inc. and Pure Software, developing software products from early phases to successful market introductions.
Ashish holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology and an M.S. in Computer Science from the Universityof Southern California .

John Silveira: Director, Pacific Coast Farmers' Market Association

John has over twenty years of experience in California 's Certified Farmers' Markets. He currently is the Director of the Pacific Coast Farmers' Market Association, President of the California Federation of Certified Farmers' Markets and a member of the California Farmers' Market Advisory Committee.
PCFMA operates over sixty markets a week in the peak season. PCFMA's mission is to establish and operate community-supported certified farmers' markets and other direct marketing outlets that provide: viable economic opportunities for California farmers and food producers, local access to farm fresh products, support for local businesses and community organizations, and education concerning food, nutrition and the sustainability of California agriculture.

Jana McBurney-Lin: Author of My Half of the Sky

Jana McBurney-Lin lived half her adult life in Asia where she enjoyed many different kinds of foods from sushi to nasi goreng, from chili crab to peking duck. She wrote for media in seven countries, as well as for National Public Radio, Writer's Digest, United Airlines, Islands Magazine, Singapore Straits Times, Japan Times and dozens of others. She was an editor at ALC Publishing in Tokyo when she met her husband, a native of southern China. One year, while in his village, she got the idea for her first novel, My Half of the Sky (KOMENAR Publishing, 2006)
The late leader of China, Chairman Mao Ze Dong, said that, “Women hold up half the sky.” My Half of the Sky is the story of a young woman who is trying to be modern, trying to hold up her half of the sky, but the traditions of her village keep her hands tied. While the narrative takes place in China/Singapore, the story is universal: where do we reconcile tradition with the modern momentum of the world?
My Half of the Sky has been given numerous literary awards. Additionally it was chosen as a National Booksense August Pick of the Month and Forbes Book Club Pick. Jana now lives in the Santa Cruz mountains with her husband and their four children where she is still trying to reconcile the tradition of eating packaged foods with the modern momentum towards healthy living.