Grace Kiehnle

Nov 16, 2024 | sandiegomagazine.com | Troy Johnson |Grace Kiehnle

This one—the newest elaborate immersion chamber we’ve come to expect from CH Projects—is personal. “I wanted nothing to do with my own culture as a kid,” says CH Projects founder Arsalun Tafazoli over a plate of kebabs and manakish and a greatest hits parade of Middle Eastern sauces (toum, amba, zhoug, garlicky yogurt elixirs of all kinds) in the movie set that is Leila, his new restaurant in North Park. “It wasn’t cool to be Middle Eastern when I was growing up. Then 9/11 happened.

Nov 8, 2024 | sandiegomagazine.com | Sean Burch |Grace Kiehnle |SBy Sean Burch

Like any good Italian mom, Anna Prezio loves to cook for her three kids—and, as of late, for her hundreds of thousands of social media followers. But today she’s cooking for one follower in particular: me. Potato gnocchi with red sauce, beef meatballs, and spicy peppers are on the menu. It’s all homemade, mostly with ingredients grown at her house in inland North San Diego County.

Nov 6, 2024 | sandiegomagazine.com | Leorah Gavidor |Grace Kiehnle

“I didn’t think I was an inventor for years,” says robotics engineer Danielle Boyer. But the 23-year-old Ojibwe creator embodied the title long before she embraced it—she designed her first robot at 17. That initial prototype became EKGAR (which stands for “Every Kid Gets a Robot”), a $20 remote-control car kit that teaches Indigenous students technical skills. She 3D prints them from recycled plastic in her home studio and has shipped more than 11,000 at no cost to recipients.

Nov 5, 2024 | sandiegomagazine.com | Amelia Rodriguez |Amelia Rodríguez |Grace Kiehnle

Meg Ferrigno had already been living and working among nomadic Tibetans for years when she went on the service trip that would change everything. “I was translating for a midwife,” Ferrigno recalls. “We saw over 100 patients and every single one of them was reporting severe infections and horrible symptoms.” Lacking access to menstrual products, the women in the area stemmed blood flow with items like straw and yak wool, which caused preventable health problems.

Nov 5, 2024 | sandiegomagazine.com | Maya Srikrishnan |Grace Kiehnle

Six days before 9/11, Dilkhwaz Ahmed arrived in the US from the Kurdistan region of Iraq to attend a conference. Ahmed, who had opened one of the first women’s domestic violence shelters in Iraq, applied for asylum after the attack, knowing she couldn’t go back. She already received threats at home for providing shelter for women and could sense that the situation would get worse. Yet her efforts never stopped.