valentina soto ruiz
Mobile Market Manager
Valentina Soto Ruiz (she/they) serves as the Mobile Market Manager for Community FarmShare. Born and raised in Medellín, Colombia, she grew up eating fresh vegetables and nourishing meals from her grandmother’s kitchen, an experience that shaped a deep belief in the interconnectedness of ecology, environmental justice, and social equity, with food justice at the center.
Valentina has also called Maryland home for over a decade, having lived in Hagerstown, Baltimore, and Montgomery County. She wishes others could experience what she had growing up: access to fresh food and a genuine connection to the land and people who sustain and grow it. That longing is what drives her work.
As an interdisciplinary artist and environmental professional, Valentina holds a BFA in Photography with concentrations in Book Arts and Sustainability & Social Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art. After graduating, she worked at the Baltimore Museum of Art as a Photographer & Collections Specialist, where she led large-scale digitization initiatives. A continued passion for environmental and food justice propelled her to pursue an MA in Global Environmental Policy with a concentration in Food, Agriculture, and Environmental Justice from American University. Her work bridges creative practice, research, and community-based action.
Her artistic practice explores the intimate relationships between human and more-than-human worlds through photography and bookmaking, centering themes of memory, place-based knowledge, cultural identity, decoloniality, and deep ecology. Her photography and artist books have been exhibited in galleries internationally and locally in Baltimore, and her artwork has been published in international publications including FOTOSFER. She has presented research on food sovereignty at the Dimensions of Political Ecology conference and co-authored reports on labor rights and transparency in global seafood supply chains.
Prior to joining CFS, Valentina worked in bilingual food access programming in Washington, DC, supporting communities experiencing food insecurity, and she continues to do so as a Bilingual Food Access Associate with FRESHFARM. She is inspired every day to contribute to local food systems change that ensures a food-secure future for all.