Dara is an activist, organizer, writer, and movement vibe curator. She is the co-founder and former executive director of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA) where she currently serves as Strategic Advisor and volunteers with NBFJA Blackademics. Dara currently serves as a member of the Kataly Foundation’s Environmental Justice Resource Collective. She is a founding member of the HEAL Food Alliance. Previously, Cooper led the launch of Fresh Moves (Chicago). She has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a Uganda Bold Food Fellowship, the 2021 Southern Foodway Alliance John Egerton Award, the 2018 James Beard Foundation Leadership Award, and was featured in Essence magazine’s 2019 Woke 100

Melanie has cultivated strong infrastructure to support funding and technical assistance pathways for rural and urban agrarians in the Northeast with the Black Farmer Fund, and worked nationally to lay critical donor conversations on wealth redistribution with the Decolonizing Wealth Project. Her previous work as a Fulbright fellow has brought a global lens to curating food systems in the US. Melanie is the granddaughter to Jamaican farmers who passed down practices  around seed saving and food being a collective resource. Melanie studied Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Delaware and  Masters in Sustainable International Development at Brandeis University.

Shantell has supported frontline communities across the US transition to regenerative economies and restore ecological health with the Climate Justice Alliance and led Cultivate Charlottesville’s Food Justice Network establish federal, state, municipal, and community foundation funding avenues for healthy school meals, urban agriculture, affordable housing, transportation, and localized markets. She is the great-granddaughter to North Carolina tobacco sharecroppers, railroad workers, and domestic laborers, a mother to Elijah. She's a University of Virginia Alum carrying a BA in Global Develop Studies and Master's in Public Health.