Black Food Fund Leadership Team
Jamese Kwele
Co-Founder
Jamese is a shaper of change, a strategic pattern weaver, and a mama of two, with over twenty years of experience in building community and facilitating transformation. She currently serves as VP, Community Resource Mobilization at Ecotrust, a nonprofit organization that works in partnership towards building towards an equitable, climate-smart future. In addition, she serves as a board member of the Black Oregon Land Trust, the Black Food Sovereignty Coalition, and the National Farm to School Network. Jamese is an alumni fellow of the Just Economy Institute, an influential and innovative network of financial activists (180+ strong) that’s working to shift capital and power in service of a more just economy. She believes in the power of Black people reclaiming our connection to the land and feels deep gratitude for the love, wisdom, and fortitude of our communities and ancestors who make this work both joyful and possible. She is fueled by authentic connection, subversive humor, and deep joy.
Christopher Rachal
Director of Reparative Capital
Christopher is a Two-Spirit member of the Natchitoches Tribe with roots to the Caddo, Chitimacha, Creek, Congo, Guinea, Eʋe, Irish, Scottish and French. He is also a Creole descendant of Marie Thérèse CoinCoin, the self-liberated médecine, farmer and entrepreneur known for raising the nation’s wealthiest free family of color and establishing Cane River, Louisiana’s free people of color community during the late 1700’s. Christopher is the dreamer behind Giving Reparations, an eCommerce store distributing reparations and currently serves as the Community & Funding Partnerships Manager at Ecotrust and Director of Reparative Capital at Black Food Fund. His educational journey includes an associates in recording arts from Full Sail University, a bachelors in Buddhist psychology with a minor in yoga from Naropa University and a masters in business sustainability from Presidio Graduate School.
Shantae Johnson
Co-Founder
Shantae serves as Executive Director of Feed’em Freedom Foundation. Her grandmothers are her muses and inspiration for how to grow and give back to the community and interact with the land. She is a cultural bridge-builder with strengths in community organizing, project management, and program creation with a public health lens. She also serves on the Oregon Board of Agriculture, appointed by former Governor, Kate Brown, where she sits on the advisory committee to represent small-scale producers. Shantae is also a co-founder and Farmer at Mudbone Grown, a Black-owned farm enterprise that promotes inter-generational community-based farming and is on the leadership team of the Black Oregon Land Trust. She is a parent, healer, chef, and referee to six beautiful brilliant children.
Tiffany Monroe
Co-Founder
Tiffany is a fifth-generation farmer with a bachelor’s degree in Crop and Soil Science with a minor in Horticulture and a master’s degree in Community and Leadership Development with an emphasis in Agricultural Education. Ms. Monroe has worked as the first African American Female Agriculture and Natural Resources Extension Agent in Kentucky history and for the Kentucky Department of Agriculture in the Office of Marketing and Product Promotion. Now home in Oregon, Ms. Monroe farms with her husband and engages in agricultural advocacy work across the country and locally. Ms. Monroe serves as co-chair of the state’s Racial Justice Council and serves as co-chair of the Environmental Equity Committee.
Arlo Bush
Community Wealth Redistribution Advisor
Arlo Bush (he/they) is a passionate Black entrepreneur, life-partner and cat-father. They possess a deep love for people, the land, our spiritual selves and the connections that weave us all together. Arlo’s experience incorporates over two decades of sales, marketing, strategy and development work. His guiding principles include deep equity, justice, healing, appreciative inquiry and moving at the speed of trust. Their life’s work is in food systems – collaborating on growth and engagement efforts at the Black Food Sovereignty Coalition. Arlo also leads Development efforts and co-leads Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion efforts for Sustainable Food Center in Austin, TX. He enjoys spending time with his family and friends, tending to their many house plants, planting, growing and cooking vegetables, and traveling to understand and experience different cultures and ways of being.
The Black Food Fund fuels Black-led food systems transformation across the Pacific Northwest. Our goal is to shift capital in ways that build wealth, self-determination, and resiliency for Black people within our regional food system.
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