ABOUT

By feeding ourselves, we can free ourselves

— Leah Penniman, farmer and activist

About Feed Black Futures:

FBF is the only Black-, Queer-, women-led organization in California investing in Black farmers and getting prison-impacted Black mamas and caregivers access to nourishing food and supporting them in growing their own. We are decolonizing the food system through feeding Black mamas and giving them the resources, tools, and advocacy pathways to steward land.

Ali Anderson

Founder & Co-Executive Director of Partnerships and Development
ali@feedblackfutures.org
Ali Anderson 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.
Sophi Wilmore

Co-Executive Director of Operations and Communications
sophia@feedblackfuture.org
Sophi (they/she) channels their fight for liberation into food justice, abolition, and fighting anti-blackness which closely intersects ecosystem sustainability and can be intimately practiced through food sovereignty. She believes that food sovereignty for Black communities lies at the center of liberation, public and ecosystem health, and the dismantling of systems of oppression. Sophi advocates 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 previously worked in agriculture, environmental sciences, and journalism. They were most recently in the role of Science Communicator for a California water sustainability non-profit. Sophiattended 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 a deep love for learning, people, and nature.
Melinda Johnson

Community Engagement Coordinator
melinda@feedblackfutures.org
Melinda Johnson is a certified life coach specializing in emotional wellness, inner healing, and divine transformation. She is a motivational speaker, author, and poet. She also works in social justice organizing, and food justice.
Melinda graduated from the University of Phoenix with her Bachelors in Business Administration with a concentration in Project Management.
She is the Community Engagement Coordinator for Feed Black Futures. A position that originated during the pandemic, as we worked together to get food to black families who were directly impacted by COVID-19.
Ms. Betty McKay

Strategic Advisor
Ms. Betty McKay is a force to be reckoned with who uses her god-given gifts, including her warrior spirit, to organize change for the better. Her work specifically focuses on mamas impacted by the carceral system–a passion ignited after seeing the conditions from inside the system when she, herself, was incarcerated for 27 years.
While Ms. Betty holds the position of Membership Growth and Wellness Coordinator at Essie Justice Group, she serves as a Strategic Advisor with Feed Black Futures, using all of the knowledge gained through her powerful lived experiences. She also leads Healing Circles for formerly incarcerated people, again, focusing on supporting Black mamas. She recently graduated from a trauma response class with SAMHSA to aid in this work.
She wants to leave this world better than she found it, while acknowledging she can’t do that alone, hence being intentional about her partnerships, including this one. Ms. Betty is proud to work with Ali and Feed Black Futures, knowing “to free us, we gotta feed us” so that we are less dependent on the system that consistently does harm and disadvantages us.

Who We Are:

Feed Black Futures started as a collective of Black femme abolitionist organizers, growers, herbalists, and birthworkers. Our team continues to embrace individuals who are passionate about food justice as volunteers and consultants, while maintaining a small team of staff members.

We believe that we must free ourselves by investing in Black food sovereignty and divesting from the systems that keep people—especially Black people—in cages and exploited through agricultural prison labor.

Meet Our 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.
Jeneba serves as a Core Collective Member at Agroecology Commons (AC).

Learn More About AC
Jamie Fanous

Jamie (she/her) 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.

Learn More About CAFF
Jawno Okhiulu

Rooted in Afro-Indigenous and Diasporic heritage and inspired by the boundless potential of Afrofuturism, Jawno (any/all) 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.

Learn More About Waverly Street
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.