Collective Leadership
Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust’s Co-directors and Board of Directors bring their diverse skill sets in Cooperative Development, Climate Justice, Land Access, Farmer Services, Food and Land Sovereignty, Farming, Education, Herbalism, and Global Indigenous ways of honoring the land and each other to build a land trust with clarity of focus, intentionality, and lived experience that centers the voices of QTBIPOC Farmers, Land Stewards, and Earth Workers.
Staff
Dr. Gabriela Pereyra (Ella | She)
Land Network Weaver, Land Network Program Co-Director
Gaby Pereyra is a Venezuelan/Uruguayan transplant to NY. Her immense love for plant ancestors started at an early age, when she began to learn anything and everything about them, especially their relationship to people in agro-ecosystems. Gaby's current responsibility as Land Network Weaver is to seed and strengthen relationships, networks, collaborations, and knowledge exchange among Black, Indigenous, and other land stewards of color. Over the past 15 years, Gaby has worked alongside farmers and land stewards from the Americas, Africa, and Europe, learning about the magical trade-off of carbon, nitrogen, and water between the soil, plants, and the sky. As a descendent of immigrant and refugee ancestors and as an immigrant herself, her commitment is to the re-connection of communities and land, under land tenure models that support human beings and non-humans beings, to create more equitable possibilities for our future ancestors.
Larisa Jacobson (all pronouns)
Policy, Partnerships, and Climate Justice Co-director
Descended from peasant farmer ancestors who tended mountainsides of maize, millet, and watermelons, Larisa is a land steward, web weaver, herbalist, and story booster tending seeds of transformation in this Upside Down World. With over 20 years of farming experience and training/professional roots in community health, agroecology, and education, Larisa’s previous work as Co-Director and Farm Manager of Soul Fire Farm sought to reclaim Black and Brown people’s connection with land, ancestral practices, and our sacred roles as mediators between soil and sky. Other interwoven threads of experience include a project to amplify the stories shared by Black and Brown youth pushed out of high school and organizing for collective land reclamation and community self-determination by elders and youth living and growing food in public housing. A founding member of the NEFOC Network, NEFOC Land Trust Interim Council, and a former founding board member of NEFOC Land Trust, Larisa brings fierce commitment to land rematriation and reparations, years of policy experience, an open heart for deep listening and nurturing leadership for collective action, and skills in grappling with the nitty gritty of power structures and sometimes painful challenges of healing history.
Çaca Yvaire (Atakapa Ishak) (Li/He)
Terran Shield: Community Conservation Co-Director
I am an Atakapa Ishak, Kréyòl, and Black territorial scholar-artist and student of planetary science and political geoecology; I bring a unique lens to conservation work. I am primarily invested in stimulating and uplifting an infrastructure that supports a rich and imaginative solidarity between lifeways, and honoring the varied traditions of relating sustainably to the world around us through non-industrial agroecology, agriculture, silviculture, aquaculture, etc. that have been historically side-lined by imperialist design. Under the title of the Terran Shield, I am defending a space in which a regional and national community of land stewarding (water-singing, earth-building, and fire-wielding, air-breathing) practitioners of all creeds may collectively prepare and secure a place for independence and resiliency in a time of wicked cultural extraction, neglectful and uneasy political leadership, and well-funded environmental destruction.
I am actively applying black, creole, indigenous and radical cosmologies in this role, intent on delivering a series of practical cultural “mechanisms” and organizational strategies useful in re-uniting and re-turning health with fragmented communities- both human and non-human. Whether developing cultural respect easements, evaluating rainmaking ceremonies, supporting grassroots activism, or drafting plans for transition I am foremost committed to the freedom of present and future BIPOC children to grow, learn, love, laugh, and migrate as (and when) necessary, without the terrors and losses known to my ancestors.
Kenya Lazuli (she/they)
Vermont Land Network Coordinator
Kenya is the Co-Founder of Radical Imagination, an organization dedicated to creating space for Black, Indigenous and all people of color to commune with one another and the land, including running an arts residency, hosting skillshares and workshops and feeding residents and visitors from her unruly garden. Kenya owned and operated an educational urban farm in Portland, Oregon and taught the basics of building soil health, caring for bees, ducks, and goats prior to moving back to her home in Vermont. Her current work is focused on the Every Town project with the primary goal of permanent land access and stewardship for BIPOC in Vermont.
Stephanie Morningstar (Kanien’kehá:ka, Wakeniáhten, Mohawk, Turtle clan) (She/Her, They/Them)
Executive Director, Relationships and Reciprocity Co-Director
Stephanie is Kanien’kehá:ka, Wakeniáhten (Mohawk nation, Turtle clan), with ancestors rooted in Six Nations of the Grand River Territory and Europe. She is a plant nerd, medicine tender, bridge builder, soil and seed steward, scholar, student, and Earth Worker dedicated to decolonizing and liberating minds, hearts, and land- one plant, person, ecosystem, and non-human being at a time. She loves to learn and share stories about medicines; builds soil and reintegrates mycelium at Sky World Apothecary and Farm; teach about the plant-human-non-human-ancestral connection through a decolonial lens at Seed, Soil, + Spirit School; and liberates land with and for Indigenous, Black, and people of color as the Relationships and Reciprocity Co-Director at the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust. Stephanie is also PhD Candidate in the Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Graduate Program focusing her work on Biocultural Restoryation at the SUNY ESF Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.
Ailin Lu (She | They)
Vision Aide, Community Conservation Program
As a descendant of farmers, nomadic beekeepers, traditional medicine practitioners, and scholars from southern China, Ailin's path is one that emerges from each of these lineages. She enjoys learning from the wisdom of plants through natural dyes and medicines and imagines that her close astrological study of the seasons mirrors her ancestor's journeys across the mainland following wildflowers--hives in tow. Before starting at NEFOC-LT, Ailin designed systems to measure housing data which could then be used to advocate for resident services. She melds her analytical and creative talents in her position of Vision Aide, applying her experiences in user research, design thinking, and ceremony.
Christine Hutchinson (She/Her)
Black Land Stewardship Cultivation Co-director
I am a veteran teacher in Newburgh NY, graduate of Siena College & NY Institute of Technology. Relocated to the lower Hudson Valley from Long Beach CA, via Brooklyn and Albany, NY. In 2004, started a character education, life-skills, community service program for teen girls. Since 2006, I’ve been involved in food justice & self-sufficiency and then small-scale commercial poultry farming. I am currently the education coordinator for Downing Park Urban Farm. All this work has resulted in youth involvement in gardening and stewardship projects, food security/equity, distribution, and engaging with leaders in the ag/urban ag movements. I started a nonprofit to umbrella old and newer projects. Most recently, we established an internship for youth at the urban farm. I bring with me - in whatever role I occupy, questioning/research, melding of disparate ideas received with an open mind, tenacity toward the mission, clarity, focus, ability to organize around multiple considerations, and the skills from my roles above.
Mandana Boushee (ماندانا) is an Iranian-American community herbalist, storyteller, land tender, and a joyous member of the mycelial network of liberatory-movement stewards and lovers. She is a co-founder and educator at Wild Gather, School of Herbal Studies, where she has the deep pleasure of sharing her love and experiences with plant medicine and community care.
Mandana finds her north star in supporting her community’s diverse relationships to the land, through empowering personal healing, reconnection, reclaiming, and remembering of cultural and ancestral knowledge, instructions, and technologies. Through her shared wisdom and initiatives in the Mahicantuck (Hudson) Valley, she works to offer her community access to equitable care, fertile land, plant medicine, and herbal education.
When she's not actively tending her utopic future seeds, she can be found freaking on a puzzle, laying it down at scrabble, reading 5 books at once and drinking tea from the samovar at her crib.
Board of Directors
Rafael Aponte (He/Him)
Member, Board of Directors
Rafael Aponte is an Afro-Puerto Rican farmer born and raised in the Millbrook housing projects of the South Bronx. He holds over fifteen years of experience working as a community activist, advocate, and educator. After graduating from Farm School NYC’s certificate program in urban agriculture in 2011, he relocated to Tompkins County and established Rocky Acres Community Farm in Freeville, NY in 2013. Rocky Acres is a 10-acre farm that focuses on education and the sustainable production of local vegetables, eggs, and meat for low-resourced communities. It combines the knowledge and spirit of social justice with the transformative healing aspects of nature and agriculture to promote equity in both urban and rural food systems. He spearheaded the Harvest Box program, an affordable farmshare to serve the needs of underserved residents of Tompkins County.
John Steven Deloatch Giraldo (JD) (He/Him, She/Her, They/Them)
Member, Board of Directors
I am an Earthworker that focuses on connection to the land, healing with the land and education of how different natural systems work. I am guided by Freedom Loving Plants ("weeds") and the stories of ancestral plants. My dream is to have have growing/green spaces where people can pass on family and cultural traditions as well as create new experiences.
I know the joy of being on the land where a person can truly be themselves and I would love to help people achieve the same by helping with the Land Trust. The first time I felt this was the 2017 Northeast Queer & Trans People of Color Conference and experiencing land and space in camaraderie is something I believe everyone should experience in their heart and bones. It's also important to me to have a space where people can pass on their stories and ways of being in respect to Mother Nature, especially for people who are migrating from different Mother Lands to those who are being raised here so they can maintain a sense of culture, tradition and sovereignty.
Keely Curliss (She/Her, They/Them)
Member, Board of Directors
Nipmuc Nation
Keely is a queer indigenous farmer, youth worker and community organizer who lives in Boston, MA. She is a member of the Nipmuc Nation and has spent the last 12 seasons growing and cultivating food in spaces of all sizes, from her small second floor back porch to 31 acre vegetable farms. Keely is Farm Manager for Movement Ground Farm in RI.
When not tending to plants and land, Keely can be found organizing as a part of the leadership team of Rooted in Community, a national network of youth, food and environmental justice organizations. Keely dreams of a world post capitalism and the exploitation of mother earth where folks honor the land and express gratitude for the abundance. Keely is soon to leave her non-profit job in hopes of reimagining a way to pay the bills while making space to deepen her connection to community, organizing and growing food.
Gratitude to the Foundational and Historical Farmily
Leah Penniman & Soul Fire Farm
NEFOC Network Co-founder, Technical Assistance Liaison, Original Fiscal Sponsor, 2019-2020
Carmen Mouzon
Interim Council member 2019-2020, Board Member, 2020-2022
Baba Clark Arrington
Technical Assistance Committee 2019
Diana Warwin
Interim Council member 2019-2020
Elizabeth O’Gilvie
Interim Council Member 2019-2020
Julian Hill, Esq.
Technical Assistance Committee 2019
Neftalí Duran
Interim Council Member 2019-2020
Nia Holley
Interim Council Member 2019-2020, Board Member, 2020-2022
Ulum Pixan
Interim Council Member 2019-2020
