National Design Team

Krysten Aguilar is the Co-Executive Director at La Semilla Food Center where she oversees all policy advocacy efforts and directional leadership of the organization. She is part of a woman of color-led leadership team, driving La Semilla's mission of creating a fair and sustainable local food and farm system and riding on the frontier of nonprofit development with an innovative leadership model, holistic programming, and using food systems work as a tool for cultivating community based economic development and healthier communities.

Since 2012, Dr. Sade Anderson has been involved in the food justice and sovereignty movement in Washington, D.C., and Prince George’s County, Maryland, helping to shape food education, access, and sustainability. As a single mother, community organizer, scholar, food and farm advocate, nutrition educator, and birth companion, Sade finds herself at these intersections helping to decolonize and liberate our minds, bodies, and spirits to create a healthier and more sustainable future for the next generation. Dr. Anderson has a Bachelor of Science in History from Bowie State University, a Master of Professional Studies in Africana Studies from Cornell University and a PhD in African Diaspora Studies and Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Kaylena Bray (Haudenosaunee/Seneca) holds a B.A. from Brown University, and MSc from the University of Oxford in Environmental Change and Management. Kaylena’s research and work are focused on strengthening vital links between food systems, Indigenous knowledge, and biocultural health. She has spent her career addressing environmental health challenges using multimedia campaigns, global knowledge exchanges, and by participating in a multitude of local and international forums. Currently, she is on the executive committee of Alianza Milpa, an Indigenous-led fund supporting seed diversity across Turtle Island, and also pursuing a Doctor of Public Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Winona Bynum is currently the executive director of the Detroit Food Policy Council (DFPC) an education, advocacy and policy organization led by Detroiters committed to creating a sustainable, local food system that promotes food security, food justice and food sovereignty in the city of Detroit. Prior to joining DFPC, her work experience includes roles at Gleaners Community Food Bank of Southeastern Michigan, and Fair Food Network. Winona is a registered dietitian/nutritionist (RDN) and studied public health at Emory University. Winona is dedicated to helping to create and maintain a fair, equitable, and sustainably-operating food system in the City of Detroit, in which doing the healthy thing is the easy thing.

Noel Didla is an immigrant from Guntur, South India, making Jackson, Mississippi home. Noel currently serves as the co-chair of the MS Food Policy Council and co-leads strategy, resource generation, design, community engagement and research for the MS Food Systems Fellowship. As someone hailing from the Global South living in the Deep South, Noel is committed to human rights, racial equity, economic equity and environmental justice centered transformative change as informed by the truths and legacies of peoples and places.

Kibibi Blount-Dorn is the Education and Engagement Program Manager for the Detroit Food Policy Council. She has a bachelors’ in Urban and Regional Planning from Michigan State University, and a Masters of Urban Planning from Wayne State University. She is a lifelong Detroit resident, and has been a community development advocate and community gardener since she was a teenager. She worked with several community organizations in the city of Detroit before coming to Detroit Food Policy Council. Kibibi lives in the Cass Corridor with her wife and two children.

Liz Gensler is an Outreach Specialist with Michigan State University Center for Regional Food Systems. Liz’s work is grounded in the Michigan Good Food initiative, a statewide agenda to advance food that is healthy, affordable, and fairly and sustainably produced. She co-coordinates the Michigan Local Food Council Network, a community of practice for local food and food policy councils, facilitating networking and capacity-building across councils in the state, managing a small grant program, and connecting with resources at local, state, and national levels.

Kitchen Table Consulting, LLC is composed of two principals, Jen Dalton and Miles Gordon - each with over a decade of food systems development and community engagement work as program directors working for a variety of non-profit organizations. Jen and Miles work at the local, regional, national, and international levels with clients engaged in community empowerment, organizational leadership, sustainable communities and systems development; and design and facilitate community forums. They co-founded the Mendocino County Food Policy Council and participated as members of the California Food Policy Council.

Mary Hendrickson is Associate Professor in the Division of Applied Social Sciences at the University of Missouri. She is a rural sociologist whose passion is making the world a better place through food. She studies the way food production and consumption has changed over the past few decades, and how farmers, eaters and communities can create more sustainable food systems. She teaches sustainable food and farming courses at MU, and is currently a Fulbright Scholar to Iceland, teaching sustainable agriculture. From 1997-2012, she worked to create local food systems in Missouri as an extension sociologist, gaining valuable on the ground experience in transforming food systems.

Marcus Hill is a Recruitment Specialist for the U.S. POINTER national brain health study coordinated by Wake Forest Baptist Health and sponsored by Alzheimer’s Association. He is also a co-coordinator and consultant on behalf of the US Solidarity Economy Network and a North American delegate and board representative with the Intercontinental Network for the Promotion of Social Solidarity Economy (an advisory group to the UN). He currently serves as chair for Island CultureZ: an equitable, non-displacing, community wealth-building, agriculture-centered, neighborhood-based initiative in Winston-Salem, NC. He has been involved in addressing local food issues/opportunities since 2009 and has been involved in a number of food councils at various scales while co-coordinating a local food council-turned-consultancy called Forsyth Foodworks.