"Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity.” If this quote from Yehuda Berg is true, then what must also be true is that the speakers of those words yield power to influence the masses. Adding diverse speakers, with different perspectives, to your platforms, digital mediums, conferences, panels, etc. provides depth to your programming. When a speaker sheds light from a new viewpoint, it can illuminate the issue at hand and provide clarity for each person in the room, in a different and personal way.
Use the catolog below to find diverse speakers to add to your events.
Green
Area of Expertise: organic retailer, food justice advocate
Olympia Auset is a LA Native and Howard University Grad. In 2016, she started SÜPRMARKT, which provide low cost organic groceries in Los Angeles, to eliminate food deserts. A vegan of 12 years, she grew tired of traveling hours by bus each time she needed fresh, healthy food. Having grown up in neighborhoods across Los Angeles, Olympia is very familiar with the differences in creativity, potential, and happiness that accompany differing socio-economic landscapes, and she is steadfast in her commitment to creating infrastructure for a better Earth. Olympia was featured by Wanderlust and Huffington Post for “Give Three Gifts,” a video about innovative kindness.
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Area of Expertise: chef, food justice advocate, food sovereignty
M. Karlos Baca (Tewa/Dine/Nuchu) is an Indigenous Foods Activist from the Southern Ute Nation. He is the founder of Taste of Native Cuisine, which was created alongside the Southern Ute Cultural Center and Museum, to promote traditional Indigenous Foodways in the community and has grown over the last decade to include work with Tribal Nations across the country, the founder of 4th World Farm which is focused on pre-colonial foods and agricultural systems of the high desert region of the southwest, and is a co-founder of the Indigenous food activist group the I-Collective which uses Indigenous Foodways as a medium to combat structural white supremacy and continued warfare against Indigenous people. Most importantly he is a son, father, uncle, and grandfather.
Area of Expertise: food advocate, award-winning chef
Mashama Bailey is an American chef trained in French technique who is currently cooking Southern cuisine. In 2019, Bailey was awarded a James Beard Award as best chef of the southeast. In 2022, Bailey was awarded a James Beard Award as Outstanding Chef. She partnered with Johno Morisano to build their restaurant, The Grey, in Historic Downtown Savannah. Occupying a 1938 art deco Greyhound Bus Terminal that they painstakingly restored to its original luster, The Grey offers a food, wine and service experience that is simultaneously familiar and elevated. Bringing her personal take on Port City Southern food to a city of her youth allows Mashama to tap into all of her experiences to create dishes that are deep, layered, and soulful in their flavors.
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Area of Expertise: educator, farm training
Kamal Bell is Founder and CEO for the 12-acre Sankofa Farms in Orange County, North Carolina. There, he raises leafy greens and other vegetables for people who live in communities without easy access to healthy foods. He also raises honeybees there. Sankofa Farms is a multifaceted agricultural entity that seeks to assist changing the food intake habits of those living in and affected by food deserts. Bell uses Sankofa Farms Academy for building a foundation around the study of bees and of agriculture spans diverse subjects, from history to the STEM disciplines of science, technology, engineering, and math.
Area of Expertise: writer, food justice advocate
Area of Expertise: farm training, sustainability, community development
Xavier Brown is a native of Washington, DC and a graduate of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. Brown is the founder of Soilful City in Washington, DC. He operates at the boundaries of urban agriculture, environmental sustainability, and African Diasporic culture. His work intertwines sustainability with the issues that impact stressed communities from gun violence to mass incarceration. By studying the practices of indigenous people and going back to ancestral knowledge, Xavier is creating a new sustainability movement that is healing the people and the land by reconnecting our scared relationship to the earth.
Area of Expertise: author, wine educator, speaker, and consultant whose work explores the intersection between race and wine
Julia Coney is a Washington, D.C. and Houston, Texas-based wine writer, wine educator, speaker, and consultant. Her wine writing includes stories on wine, winemakers, and the intersection of race, wine, and language. Julia is the Wine Consultant for American Airlines in partnership with the James Beard Foundation. Julia is the recipient of Wine Enthusiast's 2020 Social Visionary Award Winner for her work in writing and speaking on diversity, equity, and inclusion in the wine industry. Wine Industry Network has named her one of Wine’s Most Inspiring People for 2022.
Area of Expertise – food waste avoidance, sustainability, food justice
Jasmine Crowe is a social entrepreneur and the founder of Goodr, a startup based in Atlanta, Georgia that is leveraging technology to combat hunger and food waste. Goodr collects surplus food from organizations like Turner Broadcasting Systems, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and others, and redirects that food to nonprofits who distribute the food to people experiencing food insecurity. The company also works directly with cities and governments to purchase quality food for certain communities. Crowe has collected and donated more than two million food items worldwide and fed more than 80,000 people through the Sunday Soul Homeless feeding initiative as well. The initiative started out as formal pop-up dinners for the homeless community of Atlanta.
Area of Expertise: food justice advocate, entrepreneurship
Chef Lachelle Cunningham has been a dynamic force on the Twin Cities’ food scene and is known for cooking globally inspired comfort food that thwarts unhealthy stereotypes and fuses in global flavors. She began her culinary career by launching Chelles’ Kitchen in 2012. She soon became known for her work as the founding Executive Chef of Breaking Bread Cafe (2015) in North Minneapolis, where she received many accolades for her food creativity and social justice work. In 2018, Chef Lachelle began building Healthy Roots Institute, with a mission focused on healing and social justice through food education, culinary arts and entrepreneurship. Her greater vision is to grow Healthy Roots Institute for greater capacity to impact people through food, culinary education, and entrepreneurship.
Area of Expertise: environment, climate justice advocate
Kristy Drutman, otherwise known as “Browngirl Green” is passionate about working at the intersections between media, diversity, and environmentalism. As a youth climate activist, Kristy has spoken in front of thousands as well as facilitated workshops centered around environmental media and storytelling in cities across the United States. She has also worked with youth from around the world to create collaborative, intersectional online media with the goal of creating conscious, culturally relevant content to engage audiences about proactive solution-building to the climate crisis. Kristy also Co-Founded Green Jobs Board, an online platform bridging the equity and inclusion gap within the green economy.
Area of Expertise: entrepreneurship
Nailah Ellis-Brown has made a name for herself as part of the Detroit manufacturing renaissance. Her distinctive hibiscus Ellis Island Tea, based on a family recipe and bottled in an urban 4,000 square foot plant, has expanded sales into six airports and Lipari Foods locations across 12 Midwestern states along with shelf space in regional retailer Meijer and Whole Foods stores. In 2021 Ellis Isle made history as the largest Black woman-owned beverage company in the U.S. What started with small batches and selling bottles from the back of a car quickly became much bigger business. Thanks to Nailah’s drive and determination, Ellis Isle now operates a full-scale, state-of-the-art production facility and ships orders to retailers and customers nationwide.
Area of Expertise – author, farm advocacy, equity and inclusion
Jillian Hishaw is an innovative strategist, Founder, and Attorney in the areas of agriculture, food systems and asset protection, she was recently recognized by the Clif Bar Co. as a “Food Industry Changemaker.” Is one of a few Black Women in the World with a LLM in Agricultural law and over 20 years of local, state, federal, fellowship and nonprofit experience, Hishaw is the Founding CEO of Family Agriculture Resource Management Services (F.A.R.M.S.) an international non-profit organization. F.A.R.M.S., provides legal services to aging, rural, small Black farmers in and outside the US. For nearly ten years in operation, F.A.R.M.S., has saved small farms from foreclosure, donated nearly two million lbs. of produce to rural high poverty, food insecure communities in five countries and more!
Area of Expertise: ethically sourcing spices, entrepreneurship, indigenous foods
Area of Expertise: applying a social design lens to food, creating interdisciplinary culinary work that centers food as a vehicle for sociopolitical education and reparation.
Krystal Mack is an Autistic Black woman born and raised in Baltimore, MD. Krystal’s lived experiences speak through her practice. One of the traits of her Autism is impaired interoception, which poses a challenge when identifying physical pain, hunger, and thirst. This neurological delay has been an obstacle throughout her life; it has also mediated her relationship with food and nature in a way that allows her to embrace the layers of her identity and use them as a conduit for conversational design. Krystal began her practice as a chef and now approaches this work as a food designer, social practice artist, and herbalist, maintaining regard for African diasporic foodways and following the intuitive ancestral wisdom of the Earth. Krystal uses food design to construct spaces for dialogue and inquiry into the cultivation, or lack thereof, of sustainable and accessible practices supporting or hindering reparative futures for marginalized communities.
Area of Expertise: food advocate, author
Tracye McQuirter is a 34-year vegan, best-selling author, award-winning public health nutritionist, and vegan trailblazer. The New York Times called her work a key reason for the popular rise of veganism among African Americans—who are the fastest growing vegan demographic in the U.S. She has spent the past 30 years teaching people how to go vegan for life and love it.
Area of Expertise: author, culinary historian
Adrian Miller is a food writer, James Beard Award winner, attorney, and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver, Colorado. He is an American culinary historian, whose books have twice won the James Beard Foundation Book Award for Reference and Scholarship: Soul Food in 2014 and Black Smoke in 2022. Soul Food combines archival research with Miller's own travels (visiting 150 restaurants in 35 cities) to survey the way the food culture of the Southern United States has been "reestablished and reinterpreted" as African-Americans moved to other parts of the country, using the lens of the diaspora to interpret this evolution.
Area of Expertise: agriculture technology, sustainability
Martha Montoya founded award-winning AGTools Inc., a solution using machine learning and artificial intelligence to enable farmers, food supply chain stakeholders, banking, insurance, and other industries to make better decisions, increase profits, avoid waste, and impact climate change. Montoya has more than 25 years of worldwide agricultural and supply chain experience including appointments to the California Board of Agriculture and Food, the board of the National Latino Food Industry, the worldwide board for Women for Walmart, and the executive board of the United States Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.
Area of Expertise: organic retailer, food justice advocate
Eliana is the founder and CEO of Eliment and Company, which includes an innovation venture lab, production studio and consulting firm. Her mission is to amplify and invest in diverse small businesses, startups and content creators. Outside of tech, Eliana co-founded her family's organic Alquimia Tequila, an award-winning product that is 100% USDA-certified organic. She also founded and currently leads Latinas Who Brunch, a national community of Latinas with chapters in 17 states and counting. Eliana was included in the Forbes 30 Under 30 List in 2017. She was also included in the top 10 Latina Corporate Executives List by Latina Style Magazine in 2017 and the Top 50 Most Powerful Latinas List by ALPFA in 2019. She is a graduate of Harvard College and is originally from Oxnard, California.
Area of Expertise - food waste avoidance, sustainability, climate advocate
Pashon Murray has a drive for waste reduction, recycling, and reuse of materials. She is helping to change the carbon footprint of Detroit through revitalizing neighborhoods, finding solutions for everyday waste, and eliminating trips to the landfill through composting. In 2010 Murray started Detroit Dirt, a local composting and waste collection company that specializes in providing a sustainable option for the metro Detroit community. Detroit Dirt’s closed-loop model process was designed by Murray to help revitalize Detroit.
Area of Expertise: internationally recognized urban farmer, food activist
Jamila Norman a.k.a (Farmer J) is a daughter to Caribbean parents, whose history is rooted in agriculture. She is an internationally recognized urban farmer, food activist and mother based in Atlanta, GA. She is a University of Georgia graduate with a degree in Environmental Engineering, After 10 years in her professional career, Jamila has now committed fully to operating her independent, organic urban farm, Patchwork City Farms, which she founded 2010. In 2014 she served as a US delegate to Slow Food’s Terra Madre Salone del Gusto, in Turin, Italy. She and her farm, Patchwork City, have been featured in various publications including Modern Farmer Magazine, SeedStock.com, The Library of Congress and the Southern Foodways Alliance oral history project.
Area of Expertise: Author, food justice
Dr. Ashanté M. Reese is a writer, anthropologist, and assistant professor of African and African Diaspora at The University of Texas at Austin. Broadly speaking, she is interested in Black geographies – the ways Black people produce and navigate spaces and places in the context of anti-Blackness. While she is interested in and committed to documenting the ways anti-Blackness constrains Black life, she is constantly brought back to the question, what and who survives? She works at the intersection of critical food studies and Black geographies, examining the ways Black people produce and navigate food-related spaces and places in the context of anti-blackness
Area of Expertise: food justice advocate
Stephen Satterfield has spent his career redefining food and beverage as means of organizing, activating and educating. He is the founder of Whetstone, a groundbreaking magazine and media company dedicated to food origins and culture from around the world.
Prior to his career in media, Satterfield was a sommelier and social entrepreneur promoting wine as a catalyst for socioeconomic development for Black wine workers in South Africa. Satterfield is among the most prominent and respected voices in U.S. food media, and host of the critically acclaimed Netflix docuseries, High on the Hog.
Area of Expertise: media, food justice
Kaia Shivers is a media scholar, entrepreneur and creative who launched Black Farmers Index in 2020 as a solution to the coming food security issues in the U.S. The organization centers an online directory connecting consumers to Black farmers. With a listing of over 1,000 traditional and non-traditional growers, it also engages in events, campaigns and collaborations in efforts to diversify U.S. agribusiness by bringing more exposure to Black growers. A professor in Liberal Studies at New York University, she has been in numerous DEI initiatives and talks at the institution. Shivers also leads the online news company Ark Republic, a boutique media firm committed to telling rich and robust stories, all the while, reporting news from an innovative, global lens.
Area of Expertise: organic handler/processor, food justice advocate
Keisha Smith is the founder and CEO of Sanaia Applesauce, an organic gourmet applesauce company. As an entrepreneur, she is redefining snacking with her dairy-free, all-natural applesauce company. With 99 percent of the market focused on children, she has made a push toward keeping the taste buds of applesauce-loving adults in mind too.
Sanaia produces applesauce inspired by some of the Bahamian flavors from her childhood like guavas, tamarinds, hibiscus, ginger, blackberry, lavender and pear.
Area of Expertise: farm training, food justice advocacy
Clarenda "Cee" Stanley is currently the CEO/President of Green Heffa Farms. From an agrarian family in Alabama's Black Belt, Cee did not see herself as a farmer. But in 2018, she co-founded Green Heffa Farms and was selected to be the 2019 Featured Farmer for Hemp History Week. However, in 2019, Cee also found herself being solely responsible for Green Heffa Farms and from there, she began to reimagine the legacy she wanted to leave for her children and grandchildren. It was from this experience that she developed the farm's commitment to the 4Es: Economic empowerment, Equity, Education, and Environment.
Area of Expertise – author, chef, the intersectionality of food, activism
Omar Tate is a Philadelphia-rooted artist and chef. Omar has worked for fifteen years in the restaurant industry in some of the best restaurants in New York City and Philadelphia. During his time as a cook, he found the lack of diversity and representation of African Americans and other people of color to be unbalanced both in the kitchen and on the plate. In a profession where the product is a direct representation of cultures from around the globe, Omar found that modern aesthetics of Black American culture to be severely limited, if not non-existent. Honeysuckle has received critical acclaim not only as a food concept but also as a leading philosophy of the future of food thought in America.
Area of Expertise – author, chef, the intersectionality of food, farming, health, activism
Bryant Terry is a James Beard & NAACP Image Award-winning chef, educator, and author renowned for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system.
San Francisco Magazine included Bryant among 11 Smartest People in the Bay Area Food Scene, and Fast Company named him one of 9 People Who Are Changing the Future of Food. In regard to his work, Bryant’s mentor Alice Waters says, “Bryant Terry knows that good food should be an everyday right and not a privilege.”
Area of Expertise – author, wellness, activism
Toni Tipton-Martin is an award-winning food and nutrition journalist who is busy building a healthier community through her books, foundation and in her role as Editor in Chief of Cook’s Country Magazine and its television show. She is a James Beard Book Award winner, and recipient of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Trailblazer Award and its Book of the Year Award Former First Lady Michelle Obama invited Toni to the White House twice for her outreach to help families live healthier lives. In 2014 she earned the Southern Foodways Alliance John Egerton Prize for this work, which she used to host Soul Summit: A Conversation About Race, Identity, Power and Food, an unprecedented 3-day celebration of African American Foodways.
Area of Expertise – Environmental Justice, Author
Dr. Monica M. White is the Distinguished Chair of Integrated Environmental Studies (2021-25), associate professor of Environmental Justice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and past president of the Board of Directors for the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. She is the first Black woman to earn tenure in both the College of Agricultural Life Sciences (established 1889) and the Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies (established 1970), to which she is jointly appointed. As the founding director of the Office of Environmental Justice and Engagement (OEJ) at UW-Madison, Dr. White works toward bridging the gap between the university and the broader community by connecting faculty and students to community-based organizations that are working in areas of environmental/food/land justice toward their mutual benefit.