OUR PEOPLE

Ali Anderson (she/they) is rooted in over a decade of experience in public health, birthwork, and food justice. She is the founder and Executive Director of Feed Black Futures, an organization with a mission to create a world where Black people have access to high-quality fresh food and the means and skills to produce it.
As a community organizer and facilitator with Black Youth Project 100, Ali led direct actions and community participatory research processes for communities facing carceral violence as well as food and environmental injustices in New York. She has been a keynote speaker on topics related to food sovereignty and food justice at Harvard School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles, and Pitzer College.
Formerly the Director of Capacity Building with the New York City Health Department’s Center for Health Equity, Ali created policies to bring pay equity and social support to community health workers working in food, reproductive, and economic justice.
Ali is from Southern California and is the granddaughter of Jamaican immigrants. She holds a Master of Public Health from Emory University. In 2021, Ali was awarded the New Voices for Reproductive Justice Black Women Green Futures Award and in 2022 was awarded the Echoing Green Social Innovation Challenge award. She sits on the steering committee for Black Farmers Rising California, New Voices for Reproductive Justice and FEAST LA.

Ali Anderson

Sophi Wilmore

Sophi (they/them) channels their passion for liberation into food justice, abolition, and work that fights against anti-blackness. They believe being in harmony with the natural world can only happen when systems of oppression are dismantled and food sovereignty for all is achieved. Sophi has a deep understanding that food sovereignty for Black communities lies at the center of liberation, public and ecosystem health, and the dismantling of systems of oppression. They advocate for cooperative systems with strong organization and leadership, amplifying everyone's strengths and providing clear direction toward a path of solidarity and healing. The environment and its people are interdependent and cannot be separated.
Sophi has experience as a farm manager, environmental scientist, and communications lead. They attended the University of Santa Cruz studying Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems as well as the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management where they studied Environmental Science with a focus in Conservation and Communication. Sophi is an artist and storyteller with deep curiosity, love, and gratitude.

Salem Tewelde

Salem (she/her) is a first generation Tigrayan-American from Denver, Colorado. With a diverse background spanning corporate strategy, organizational consulting, and public service, Salem excels at navigating ambiguity, thinking critically, and translating insights into practical solutions.
Salem’s work history includes being a Global Corporate Strategy Associate at Visa, an Organizational Strategy Consultant at Korn Ferry, and a Public Interest Fellow at the Denver Scholarship Foundation. She also has extensive community service experience and is deeply dedicated to Black Liberation and humanitarian projects. She is a burgeoning farmer and volunteers at the People’s Farm with People’s Programs. She also served s a Board Member for the Tigray Action Committee which supported ongoing relief efforts for those impacted by war in Tigray, Ethiopia. Within the Tigray diaspora, Salem facilitates space for reflections around radical politics, processing grief, and the new, free world we imagine for our people. She worked at the Tigray Community Association in Aurora, Colorado and created programming to foster intergenerational problem solving.
In the evenings, when the sun is low, you’ll find her reading in dim light, cackling with her roommate, or cooking. Salem’s greatest joy is rooted in the love of her everyday relationships, especially those of her cousins and friends.

Deepest gratitude for those who have made Feed Black Futures possible.

Melinda Johnson

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT COORDINATOR
Betty McKay

STRATEGIC ADVISOR
Janet Hughes

PROJECT DIRECTOR & STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBER

Advisory Circle

Jeneba Kilgore
Jeneba Kilgore (she/they) is rooted in Oakland, CA with extensions to Sierra Leone, West Africa, and Indiana. She spent her childhood dreaming about living on a farm and watching loved ones in the kitchen. Jeneba is a former worker-owner at Mandela Grocery Cooperative. She specializes in cooperative community economics and has 3 years of experience running a community grocery store serving low-income customers, teaching nutrition classes, and working to support urban farmers, especially Black, Indigenous, and farmers of color. Jeneba has studied and been a part of cooperatively run spaces for over a decade. Jeneba is also a beginning farmer who is passionate about growing heritage crops.
Jamie Fanous
Jamie is the Policy Director at Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF) where she focuses on working with farmers to create and advance policies that are rooted in social justice and equity. In her full-time position at CAFF a California-based non-profit she is actively working on transformational policy change. She works to create avenues to bring farmers into the policy-making process to collectively tackle some of the biggest barriers our small-scale and BIPOC farmers face, such as land access, drought, infrastructure, and more. She believes the only way we can create true systems-level change is to ensure those most impacted by policy decisions are in the policy-making seat.
Prior to advocacy, Jamie has worked in a range of positions from technical assistance and on-farm research in climate change and soil health, to managing an urban farm actively engaged with the local community. She has had the opportunity to work on farms in various parts of the world from Ghana to Panama which has shaped her views and perspectives on cultural foods, sustainability, and community. She holds an MS in Agriculture, Food, and Environment, and a MA in Environmental Policy and Planning from Tufts University.
Jawno Okhiulu
Rooted in Afro-Indigenous and Diasporic heritage and inspired by the boundless potential of Afrofuturism, jawno creates and resources work that echos the harmony of mature natural ecosystems and just technologies. As a griot writer, performer, and community organizer, they blend ancestral wisdom with modern storytelling, all the while drawing from the resilience of nature's time-tested designs. Their art is both an homage to what was and a vision of what could be, capturing the urgency of now and the dreamscape of tomorrow. They work with the Waverley Street Foundation as Program Associate where they resource community-led climate solutions across the world.here
Kat Gilje
Kathryn Gilje (Kat), she/her, is a cousin, sweets, and daughter. She is an integrated capital advisor, organizer, and somatic practitioner–in–training. Kat served as Executive Director of Ceres Trust for ten years, a private foundation which redistributed all assets in support of healthy and resilient farms, forests and communities; and the ecosystems upon which we all depend. She was co–chair of the Justice Funders governance committee; the California Foodshed Funders; the Integrated Rural Strategies Group of the Neighborhood Funders Group; and the San Joaquin Valley Funders Collaborative; and served on the Steering Committee of the Health and Environmental Funders Network. She served as funder representative to the Building Equity and Alignment for Environmental Justice Fund, and co–stewarded the Regenerative Economies Organizing Collaborative with climate justice movement leaders. Trained in agronomy in Minnesota and Cuba; in community organizing and facilitation by Voices for Racial Justice/Organizing Apprenticeship Project and Farm Labor Organizing Committee, and in non–profit finance and management by Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training, and others, Kathryn now focuses on organizing money for movements, and finance for repair, land justice, and regenerative economies. Kathryn is active in her lay–led faith community, with training from the Gamaliel Network and the Interfaith Chaplaincy Institute. She previously was a fellow at the Just Economy Institute; co–director of Pesticide Action Network North America (PAN); co–director of Centro Campesino; and senior associate at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Community Water Center and the Advisory Circle of Feed Black Futures.