ACS Webinar: EDIJ Audit Survey Results, Part 2: Caseinic Boogaloo

Last year in Buffalo, we gave a broad overview presentation of the ACS' organization-wide audit conducted by NonProfit HR on behalf of the ACS DEI Task Force.This year, we delve deeper into those findings and request additional reflection and commentary from our peers in cheese and webinar participants to help us shape how we continue to address the audit and apply its findings and your feedback to ACS as a whole. What does the survey mean to you?

How do these things affect your day to day? Why should you care? Join us and learn!

Date: Friday, June 6, 2025

Time: 1:00pm PT / 2:00pm MT / 3:00pm CT / 4:00pm ET

This webinar is free for ACS members or $25 for nonmembers.

The recording will be posted to the ACS Learning Center after.

Meet Your Speakers!

Jackie Assaad is originally from South Florida. She began her career as a classically trained chef, working in restaurants before transitioning to private yachts (yes, just like the show Below Deck). Her travels took her throughout Europe and Southeast Asia, followed by time in Central America working on small farms. After returning to her hometown in Florida, she drove across the country and spent a season working on an organic vegetable farm in Colorado. She eventually moved to Utah, where she joined the team at Beehive Cheese.

Isabel “Izzie” Ocampo (She/Her), a first-generation woman of Mexican descent and proud New Yorker who has been slinging cheese since 2018. A self-proclaimed “forever student,” Izzie’s cheese wanderlust has led her behind cheese counters at independent shops, an intern at Murray’s Cheese Caves, and now at Food Matters Again. As a woman of color navigating the industry, Izzie hopes to continue fostering a community of belonging by taking up space as her authentic unapologetic self. In her free time, she enjoys listening to music that serve as cultural identity affirming anthems, journaling, and dreaming of future projects.

Dan Utano (He/Him) has worked in the cheese industry with over 15 years of experience as a cheesemonger, cheesemaker, plant manager, and food safety officer. While he is back in graduate school pursuing an MBA, he is working as an independent consultant with small-scale food businesses. Dan has been on the ACS Board of Directors since 2021. He was a two-term committee member and former chair of the ACS Food Safety & Regulatory committee. Currently he is a co-chair and founding member of the DEI Task Force.

Emi Lee (they/them) is a BIPOC, non-binary, queer, 5th generation Californian grocer who has been in the business of food for the better part of the last three decades, and in the business of social justice even longer. Emi sits on the ACS Board of Directors, Co-Chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force, member of the Conference Planning Committee and Scholarship Selection Panel, and they have judged and spoken at Conference and Competition too many times to count. Currently Store Operations Manager for the North Coast Cooperative in foggy Arcata, CA; they reside with their longtime partner Cari behind the redwood curtain.