Community Food Funders is thrilled to announce...
The 2026-2027 Seeding Power Cohort
Twelve regional food justice leaders have come together as the fourth cohort of the Seeding Power Fellowship! These powerful individuals were carefully chosen by a selection committee comprised of Seeding Power alumni and other experts in the philanthropic and leadership development sectors.
The Seeding Power Fellowship brings together experienced leaders working across issue areas to build equitable food systems in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Our nine-month curriculum designed by Emerging Equity includes three in-person retreats and 13 virtual sessions focused on collective learning, movement building, leadership development, and collaboration.
You can read more about the fellows below. We’re grateful to all the outstanding people who applied! Our committee was inspired by the tremendous amount of talented people doing vital work in our region.
Congratulations to the newest fellows!
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More About The Fellows
Guided by Black Feminist Insurgency, asmara is dedicated to the reality that freedom is a place we can build and arrive at in this lifetime. They study and practice traditions of feminist revolution to reignite the liberatory world-building that occurs before, during, and in the wake of global systems of domination. As an artist of the experimental tradition, she focuses on raising social empathy through intimate community building and the creative practices of writing, performance, and film. As part of this practice, asmara practices agroecological conservation and grows food for free distribution to support resilient, sovereign community at Ujamaa Garden in the Northeast Bronx.
Loc Tran is the markets manager at Providence Farm Collective (PFC), a non-profit with a mission of cultivating farmer-led and community-rooted agriculture and food systems to actualize the rights of under-resourced peoples. Prior to working at PFC, he worked in various roles all focusing on food justice and food security such as a community garden organization, soup kitchens, farm to school programs, and Peace Corps Nepal.
Jonathon Savage is a New Haven, Connecticut native, farmer, and Co-Founder of Liberated Land Cooperative. He has been growing food since the age of five, cultivating a lifelong commitment to agriculture, community, and environmental stewardship. Liberated Land Cooperative is a statewide Black and Brown farmer-led cooperative that advances food sovereignty, land justice, and community empowerment through cooperative farming and equitable food access. Through his work, Jonathon is dedicated to advancing food justice by increasing access to fresh, locally grown food and supporting community-led food systems. His passion centers on building equitable, resilient food networks that empower people through land, farming, and cooperative ownership.
Lorrie Clevenger is a Senior Co-Director of U.S. Programs at WhyHunger, where she develops and oversees WhyHunger’s U.S. Program strategies: Transforming the Emergency Food System, Black Food Sovereignty, and Labor and Economic Justice. In addition to her role at WhyHunger, Lorrie is a farmer and owner at Rise & Root Farm, a women-owned, QTBIPOC centered, cooperative, organic certified vegetable farm based in Chester, NY. Lorrie is a founding member of Farm School NYC and Black Urban Growers.
Sevaad Walker (they/them) is the Programs Director at Sweet Freedom Farm, where they steward land based community programming and cultivate initiatives that deepen relationships between people, land and one another. Their work includes developing a food distribution program that provides fresh fruits and vegetables to predominantly Black and Brown queer and/or trans incarcerated people across New York State. They also serve as the Land and Community Steward at WILDSEED Community Farm & Healing Village, where they build the systems, relationships and shared infrastructure that support farmers, ecological stewardship and long term community resilience. They are a Community Collaborative member of Sankofa Village Arkansas, a member of the National Black Food & Justice Alliance and the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust (NEFOC), a Soul Fire Farm alum and participant in Farm School NYC. As land steward and memory worker, Sevaad's practice explores the intersections of abolition, disability justice, Afrofuturism, land stewardship and solidarity economy as pathways towards Black liberation.
Juliana Quaresma is the Co-Director of Groundswell Center for Local Food and Farming. Also a consultant in farm education and agroforestry with Khuba International. Beyond her professional work, she is a sheep farmer, owner of Viva Acres, and an aspiring fiber artist who loves working with wool and felting.
Dishaun Harris, also known as Farmer D, is an Afro-Indigenous urban farmer, educator, storyteller, and entrepreneur based in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the founder of Root Life LLC and Native Praxis LLC, where he weaves regenerative agriculture, youth development, media, and community-based entrepreneurship into systems of healing, cultural restoration, and economic self-determination. With more than a decade of experience engaging young people through agriculture, Dishaun is committed to building land-rooted pathways toward abundance, resilience, and liberation for Black and Afro-Indigenous communities.
Alÿcia Bacon is a community leader, writer, and equity strategist dedicated to advancing racial justice, community wealth building, and systems change. She serves as Community Engagement Officer at the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, where she leads the Equity Fund, and is the founder of The Modern Scrybe, a consulting practice focused on philanthropy, civic engagement, and transformative leadership. Her work bridges policy, storytelling, and spiritual imagination to help build communities and futures where justice becomes ordinary.
DeVonne Jackson Perez is a Queeribbean storyteller, land steward, and food systems leader rooted in the belief that our connection to food, our stories, and one another is sacred. Grounded in both scholarship and lived practice, she combines training from Cornell University's Small Farms Program and Farm School NYC with a master's degree in Communications and Media Management from NYIT to advance work at the intersection of culture, food, communication and liberation. As Director of Brooklyn Supported Agriculture, co-founder of Good Ground, and founder of Sound Bites Communications, she creates pathways for Black farmers and food businesses to be seen, heard, and sustained. Through the stewardship of her family's 17-acre farm, where she grows heritage crops like callaloo and peppers, DeVonne is reclaiming ancestral wisdom while helping build a more diverse, equitable and spicy food future.
Frances A. Pérez-Rodríguez (she/they) was born in Puerto Rico, raised in New York City, and stands in solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world. She identifies as a queer, angry Black woman prioritizing maintaining healthy relationships with the planet and with one another through tending to our interpersonal connections and freeing the land. Frances co-facilitates courses and coordinates programs at Farm School NYC, co-stewards the NYC Agroecology Process, supports local programming and relationship-building as part of her abolitionist food sovereignty and food justice work, and is a former farm manager of La Finca Del Sur Community Farm (BX) and Food & Land Education Coordinator at Woke Foods. Frances is a daughter, land steward, music head, and community organizer.
Nausher Khan is the President of Innovation & Partnerships at Red Rabbit, the largest Black-owned school food service company in the US, where he leads national strategy connecting public institutions to values-based regional supply chains. His work spans institutional procurement, equity-centered food policy, and international development across three continents. Of Pakistani heritage, he is focused on food sovereignty, supply-chain access for small producers, and positioning public food systems as drivers of equity and health.
Taylor Pate is the NYS Good Food Purchasing Program Campaign Manager at Community Food Advocates, where she collaborates with coalitions to advance values-based food purchasing in public institutions in order to build a more resilient and equitable regional food system in New York. In life, Taylor is an active member of her food coop in Brooklyn, and loves long walks with her dog Moses, gardening, and adventuring. A guiding force in her work is the belief that the solidarity economy and cooperative decision making are powerful tools for collective liberation.