Parke Troutman (he/they) grew up in small town Ohio. Like both of his parents, he went to the Ohio State University. During a summer in Berkeley, he got a case of California Dreamin’ and chose to go to grad school at UCSD. His PhD dissertation studied the power dynamics and community participation in the general plan updates for the City and County of San Diego.  

After he graduated, he lived in Hong Kong for a year before teaching at UCSD and Clarkson University (waaay upstate New York). In 2008, he became active in the local food movement. He cut his grassroots advocacy teeth with the 1 in 10 Coalition, which spearheaded efforts to reform the City of San Diego’s community garden and urban agriculture ordinances. Then Parke became the policy director of the San Diego Hunger Coalition.  

In 2016, he began working at the County Public Health Service’s Chronic Health Equity Unit. His initial project was to advise community-based organizations on local food policy. Then he switched to tobacco control, where he helped draft the tobacco control ordinances that the Board of Supervisors adopted in 2020 and 2021. Before joining Mid-City CAN, he has volunteered extensively with SanDiego350 to fight for bills in Sacramento that would limit the harms of climate change.  

Parke is your typical nerdy/bookwormy autistic single parent. His son — riffing off of ‘the three Rs’ — described him as being interested in ‘the three Ws’: wreading, writing and walking. To which, post-COVID, could be added social dancing, mainly Lindy Hop (lead and follow) but also bachata (lead so far).