Cari Borja

Lecturer
Ph.D. UC Berkeley, 2001

Expertise:
Cultural anthropology, ethnographic film, design, food, marketing, applied anthropology.

Office Hours: Will resume Spring 2025

Clark Hall 461
408-924-2630
cari.borja@sjsu.edu

Cari Borja is a cultural anthropologist, clothesmaker, and salonniere. She received her Ph.D. in cultural anthropology and film from UC Berkeley in 2001. Since then she has built a clothing line, a salon series and used her ethnographic skills to work with non-profits and larger corporations. She was a consulting anthropologist at Apple from 2017 through 2020, first at Apple University, then in retail marketing for Today at Apple and most recently in Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives. Cari has taught Design Ethnography in the Graduate Program in Design at California College of the Arts, and is currently the Chief of Staff to Alice Waters, working within the University of California on developing the Alice Waters Institute for Regenerative Agriculture and Edible Education at Davis. Her most recent research focuses on the ambivalent role our earliest childhood food memories play in our relationship to what and when, with whom and where, how and why we eat.