Quick Take
Garden-based Santa Cruz learning nonprofit Life Lab reduced its staff of 36 down to eight this summer after expected funding didn’t come through. Last week, the organization announced new leadership and is refocusing its programming.
As Life Lab’s new executive director, following 17 years as the organization’s education director, Whitney Cohen, will be helping the Santa Cruz nonprofit refocus on its decades-long mission of training garden educators nationally after a challenging summer of nearly 30 layoffs due to loss of a major contract with Pajaro Valley Unified School District and other funding sources.
In June, Cohen told Lookout that Life Lab “became financially overextended when large contracts ended and philanthropic support for program expansion did not come through.” She said the board of directors and consultants were helping the organization make staff reductions and programming changes and would give the community updates soon.
On Tuesday, Life Lab announced that Cohen was taking the reins and overseeing the organization’s $1.2 million budget and its staff of seven.
In an interview with Lookout about her new role last week, Cohen said the layoffs were a very difficult time for Life Lab’s community, and she’s looking forward to leading the organization as it gets back on track.
“This experience really caused our board and executive leadership to recommit themselves to long-term success and sustainability,” she said. “Our board is now working really closely with me, with the support of an external consultant, to come up with clear, improved governance protocols to ensure a sustainable future.”
She added that Life Lab hired a finance director and bookkeeper to assist her and the board.
The local nonprofit has about 45 years of garden-based learning expertise, developing curriculum for elementary-aged children and for training garden educators. While not a part of UC Santa Cruz, Life Lab’s central office and garden classroom are located at the university’s on-campus farm.
Over the past decade, Life Lab and PVUSD collaborated to bring Life Lab instructors to its elementary schools to create gardens and educational programs. After the district didn’t renew an expected $2.2 million 2024-25 contract with Life Lab due to budget cuts, the organization had to restructure its programming and lay off staff who were part of the district’s gardens.
However, the school district was able to hire 10 of those staff members, according to Cohen, to run garden education programming at elementary and middle schools. Cohen said seven are working as garden instructors, two as classroom teachers and one assigned to garden-based yard duty.
“The district really values those school gardens and having garden educators, so they institutionalized it,” she said.
Cohen, 46, grew up in Laguna Beach and moved to the Santa Cruz area in 1999. She first taught at the San Mateo Outdoor Education program east of Pescadero for two years before she enrolled at UCSC to earn her teaching credential. There she took a science teaching course under Robbie Jaffe, the founding director of Life Lab, and was introduced to the organization.
However, it wasn’t until her fifth year or so of teaching middle school science in Pescadero after earning her UCSC degree that she applied for the education director role at Life Lab. She’s been in that role ever since, until her recent appointment as executive director. As education director she led curriculum development and directed over 30 professional development workshops for over 700 garden-based educators annually.
Cohen said she’ll be helping the organization refocus Life Lab’s mission on that work: training garden educators as well as trainers who provide training to garden educators for organizations and schools across the country, and some internationally. Through July of this year, Life Lab has trained nearly 1,000 garden educators and trainers and, by its estimate, reached more than 5 million students nationally.
The number of educators Life Lab trains varies each year depending on whether its hosting an every-other-year summit. In 2022, it started co-hosting a summit with the Sprouts Healthy Communities Foundation, of the national grocery chain Sprouts. Cohen said Life Lab is able to train a larger number during the conferences: “In 2024, 2026, and 2028 our numbers should keep pace.”
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