Jacob Sacks

Director of Economic Development, Alchemist CDC

This story is part of our July 2026 Young Professionals issue. To read the print version, click here.

Look around Sacramento’s food scene and you’ll see traces of Jacob Sacks’ work everywhere. Many of the city’s buzziest food businesses — the addictive Jazz’s Saucy Sauce, the Latin fusion pop-up Old Coyote, the new Arab-Mexican restaurant Meza — are alumni of the Alchemist Microenterprise Academy and the Alchemist Kitchen Incubator Program, programs that equip aspiring entrepreneurs with the training and tools they need to launch their businesses.

Sacks spearheaded both programs soon after joining the nonprofit Alchemist Community Development Corporation in 2016.

Alchemist CDC also manages several of the region’s farmers markets, including the Sunday Certified Farmers Market in Southside Park, taking over after former market managers Dan and Renae Best retired earlier this year. And the nonprofit recently broke ground on their most ambitious project yet: the Alchemist Public Market, a venue in the River District that will host a food court, farmers market, retail spaces, a commissary kitchen and coworking offices.

As director of economic development at the nonprofit, Sacks has his hands in all of these projects. But the soft-spoken 37-year-old is humble about his role in the Capital Region’s food scene. “I’m very much an outsider to the food world,” he says over lunch at another Alchemist participant, Sapha Kafe. “I recognize that I don’t know a lot of this, and I’ve tried to intentionally build out the team with people who do have that experience.”

Sacks grew up in Fresno and arrived in the Capital Region to study political science at UC Davis. During a quarter abroad in Italy, he developed an affinity for walkable, close-knit cities and spent a year chasing that lifestyle as an English teacher in Spain before moving to San Diego in 2013. The transition from his small Spanish town to Southern California sprawl was jarring. “You had to drive to go anywhere, and there’s freeways everywhere, and I was like, where could I go that has that smaller, more European feel?” he says. The answer was Davis, where he returned in 2014.

“In my work, I see some of the consequences of systems that have been set up to discriminate and exclude. Over 250 years there’s been ebbs and flows of progress, but we remain far from a country that is truly equitable, vibrant, diverse and healthy. I am working to move us closer within my sphere of influence.”

Though he had previously imagined going into politics or law, Sacks instead began looking for nonprofit jobs that would let him help shape the region into his new ideal. That search brought him to Alchemist CDC. Initially hired as an administrative assistant, he wrote a series of successful grants that prompted his rise in the organization, including the grant that funded the Microenterprise Academy.

“I was kind of just in the right place at the right time,” Sacks says with characteristic humility, before explaining his in-depth process. He was inspired by similar projects that connect small-scale food entrepreneurs with the resources they need to grow, such as La Cocina in Oakland, and by La Cocina’s founder Leticia Landa.

Raising funds is always the most challenging part of running a nonprofit.

That became especially clear earlier this year, when Alchemist CDC CEO Sam Greenlee announced that the Public Market project would fold if the nonprofit could not secure a $3 million loan in “bridge funding” from the City of Sacramento or another funder. After local and social media amplified Greenlee’s message, rumors began to circulate about the 26-year-old nonprofit being forced to close.

The funding came through, and Sacks says the project is ongoing and Alchemist is here to stay. But the nonprofit is still always open to donations. “Individual donors are incredibly important to us,” he says, explaining that it is often difficult to use grant money to pay for day-to-day costs like office expenses. “The unrestricted funds that you get from private donations help make nonprofits run.”

Sacks now lives in Sacramento with his partner, Beth, her cat Julian, and his dog Roma, and loves attending baseball games at Sutter Health Park. A lifelong sports fan, he is also looking forward to soccer games at the forthcoming Sacramento Republic FC stadium in the Railyards and in being part of the nascent River District through Alchemist Kitchen.

“As this area transitions and becomes something new, being central to the identity of it is an opportunity that we’re really excited about,” he says.

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View the list of honorees from 2015 through 2026.

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