Beyond his work as chef at Campo Fina, Ari Rosen is also a founder of Corazon Healdsburg, an organization that aims to bridge the racial and cultural divides in wine country by breaking the cycle of poverty, improving quality of life, and providing for communities in need.
We sat down with a Macchiato to learn more about his mission.
“The vision for Corazon was born out of a lifetime of experiences. I grew up in Ukiah playing soccer for most of my life. It was the birth of my love for Mexican culture, music, food & its charismatic generosity steeped in the way I watched my fellow Latino teammates sharing meals, laughs & a good time with everyone who was interested. It was where my first invites to attend quincenaries or an occasional Chavez fight came from and it opened the door to an entirely new world. My parents donated a lot of their time to nonprofits and were always working to build community. My father donated his legal services on a bi-weekly basis to an organization called Nuestra Casa and my mother worked at the Youth Project. These early life experiences were the foundations for the way I began to move through the world.”
After moving to Healdsburg I sought out the same type of experience that I had grown up with and instead struggled to find the Latin voice at the foreground of this community’s social fabric, and I lived on a street where neighbors didn’t know each other’s names, or maybe I didn’t know theirs.”
“After we opened two restaurants… I found myself working with our staff in translating doctor calls, loaning money, helping with their taxes, resolving issues with their kids at school, and understanding legal documents. We raised money for about 8 years before we opened Corazon doors. Our mission was to not only create a resource center but to build and strengthen the community. This process has led us to our current mission at Corazon to build a compassionate and just community by empowering and dignifying individuals and families, advocating against injustices, and uniting people to celebrate diversity.”
“At the end of the day, my passion and my heart are called by the raw human spirit that lives in all of us. Tradition, food, culture, music & emotion are the instruments that ground, cultivate & awake this human spirit. It is my hope to serve our community by cultivating spaces, creating traditions & opportunities for this human spirit to be tasted & shared collectively.”
