Rooted Santa Barbara County has recently welcomed four new board members: Vanessa Atyabi, DNP, FNP-BC; Lori Tremer-Huey; Fred Kass, MD, JD; and Liliana Melero.
Vanessa Atyabi is a Duke-doctorally prepared Registered Nurse, International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC), and Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP-BC). She is passionate about providing accessible, comprehensive preventative primary care to all. She has a background as a District School nurse in Los Angeles, CA and worked for almost a decade in a FQHC in Santa Barbara. She now works as an Assistant Professor of Nursing at CSU Channel Islands, focusing on women’s health/pediatrics and owns a local lactation practice. Through her tenure, she identified the radical changes that lifestyle medicine made in her patients with chronic illness.
Lori Tremer-Huey has over 40 years of executive finance experience, with particular expertise in the consumer electronics industry. With an MBA in Finance from Fordham University. Lori began her career in the start-up world taking a company to an IPO and an ultimate merger with a much larger global company. She then served as Corporate Controller and Treasurer of an $80 million global consumer electronics firm. After that, Lori joined the private investment banking firm Penn Hudson Financial Group specializing in corporate restructuring and crisis management. In early 2000, she returned to the consumer electronics world, helping sell a company where she remained to lead the finance team of the newly acquired division. In 2008, she became CFO of De’Longhi America, a subsidiary of De’Longhi Italy, a 1.5-billion-euro public company. She moved to Santa Barbara in 2012 to work for Sonos, Inc. as VP of Global Finance Operations where she was instrumental in developing global accounting and tax teams.
Dr. Fred Kass is an oncologist and breast cancer specialist at UCLA Health Santa Barbara Cancer Care. Fred is also an assistant clinical professor of hematology and oncology at the UCLA Health Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. His highest values are service, innovation and excellence. Dr. Kass has enjoyed opportunities in law, business and medical science. At each juncture, his goal has been to develop imaginative, new solutions to critical problems and to draw on these experiences in pursuit of new health care paradigms. Before joining UCLA Health, Dr. Kass served as director of medical oncology and director of wellness at the Ridley-Tree Cancer Center, where he practiced for more than three decades. He has also held leadership positions on numerous community boards, including the Santa Barbara Breast Care Alliance, Cancer Foundation of Santa Barbara, Doctors Without Walls and VNA Health. He was named 2024 Physician of the Year for Santa Barbara County by the Central Coast Medical Association and received the Breast Cancer Resource Center of Santa Barbara’s inaugural Healing Through Compassion Award in 2024.
Liliana Melero has deep roots in Santa Barbara. She attended local schools and received a B.A. degree in Psychology from California State University Channel Islands. Liliana’s lifelong goal is to improve people’s quality of life. Liliana worked in the medical field for 13 years. She recently worked on diabetes research studies and was instrumental in coordinating A1c clinics for the Santa Barbara community to serve uninsured and underinsured populations. While working at Sansum Diabetes Research Institute, she collaborated with Rooted Santa Barbara County on several projects and became certified in plant-based Nutrition with the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies through eCornell. Liliana also has an extensive background in ophthalmology. As an ophthalmic technician, she worked mainly in retina and glaucoma specialties. Her expertise in taking images during fluorescein angiograms gave her a first-hand look at how diabetes leads to vision loss and ultimately blindness.
Rooted Santa Barbara County is mobilizing our community to improve health equity and resilience through food is medicine and lifestyle medicine education and support. Through hands-on programs, community partnerships, healthcare training, and bilingual nutrition education, we ensure healthy choices are easier to prepare and enjoy, accessible, and culturally relevant. For more information about the organization, visit Rooted’s website, https://RootedSantaBarbara.org.
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