Larisa Jacobson (Lala) (all pronouns | ELLE)

Climate Justice & Advocacy Co-Director

Email: larisa@nefoclandtrust.org

Rooted by ancestors who tended mountainside maize and millet, Larisa “Lala” Jacobson is a land and story steward sowing seeds of transformation.

As Climate Justice & Advocacy Co-Director, Lala advocates for climate stewardship supports for farmers and land stewards, fostering leadership and collaborative policy development among our members and connections with other Black and Indigenous-led land sovereignty efforts and coalitions. Lala is also a 2023-2024 Castanea Fellow.

Having begun farming over 25 years ago, with farming experience at a variety of scales in urban and rural settings, and roots in community health and youth leadership, Lala previously served as Farm Director and Co-Executive Director of Soul Fire Farm, where she incorporated many ancestral plants and practices, coordinated 100+ member weekly Solidarity Share food deliveries, co-hosted weeklong farmers immersion programs for hundreds of BIPOC land stewards, co-developed the inauguralBraiding Seeds Fellowship, createdresource guides, produced the bilingualLiberation on Land Skillshare Video Series, and focused on relationship with the original land stewards, theStockbridge-Munsee Band of the Mohican Nation. A founding member of the NEFOC Network, Interim Council, and Board, Lala has worked alongside farmers in Ghana, Mexico, Haiti, and Guatemala; coordinated a school for youth on the autism spectrum; taught workshops ranging from crop planning, climate resilient farming, tractors, and soil love to uprooting racism in land-grant universities’ extension systems; amplified stories shared by Black and Brown youth pushed out of high school; organized for collective land reclamation by elders and youth growing food in public housing; collaborated with disabled community leaders demanding health care change; and managed a farm outside Boston offering land and culturally relevant food for migrant and refugee communities. With children and elders at its heart, Lala’s work seeks to support ancestral and other practices for caring for soil and ecosystems during the age of climate crisis, and Black and Brown people reclaiming our sacred roles as mediators between soil and sky in the collective of beings we know as Land.