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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honorees from 2015 through 2026.

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