Coming Together

Alibek Otambekov

Alibek Otambekov was born and raised in Pamir Mountains of Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous region, Tajikistan. He has MS degree in environmental engineering and 17 years of experience in working with local farmers, grassroots organizations, and communities of Tajikistan, as well as working on the regional level in Central Asia and globally. Most recently, as an Associate Program Officer of the Christensen Fund, Alibek has supported Central Asian peasants—Dehkans; their innovations and practices that sustain agrobiodiversity of fruits, nuts, and cereals and their wild relatives; medicinal and wild food plants and herbs as well as the associated agroecosystems and cultural land management practices and livelihoods necessary to sustain this diversity. The work is set in the high-altitude agricultural valleys of Eastern Tajikistan and Southern fruit and nut forests of Kyrgyzstan. Alibek was instrumental in setting up the International Network of Mountain Indigenous People (INMIP), where he is currently the country coordinator. He is a musician and passionate advocate of the culture of his people and building partnership of local, national and global institutions.

Annie Shattuck

Dr. Annie Shattuck is an Assistant Professor in Geography and the Sustainable Food Systems Science Initiative at Indiana University, and a Fellow at Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in Oakland, California. Her research engages agroecology, environmental health, food politics, social movements and the quest for a more just rural world. She co-edited the recent book: Food Sovereignty: Concept, Practice and Social Movements.

Francisco Chapela-Mendoza

Francisco Chapela-Mendoza is an agronomist. He holds a Ph.D. in natural resources economics and is a rural planner advocate of devolving Indigenous and rural communities their role as stewards of nature. Since 1980, he has been a technical advisor and ally of Indigenous and rural communities and their organizations, helping develop their ideas about how to achieve a Good Life or Buen Vivir. Over the last 20 years, Francisco has led programs to support and enhance the stewardship role of Indigenous and Rural Communities and organizations with international institutions, such as The World Bank, Rainforest Alliance, and the Christensen Fund. He has authored and co-authored more than 50 publications about natural resources management, forest management, institutional design and natural resources management policies. Francisco is a member of Estudios Rurales y Asesoría, the International Association for the Study of the Commons, The Forest Stewardship Council, and the International Society of Tropical Foresters.

Georgina Catacora-Vargas

Georgina Catacora-Vargas is an Agricultural Engineer and Ph.D. in Agroecology. She is currently a tenure-track professor at Catholic Bolivian University's Academic Peasant Unit "Tiahuancu." Georgina is also the president of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA) and a global consultant on biodiversity and climate change issues. She has practical experience in national and international policy development and transdisciplinary research, primarily in countries from the Global South, in the fields of agroecology, sustainable local food systems, biodiversity, genetic resources, and biosafety of emerging genetic applications in agriculture. She served for 11 years as a negotiator for her country (Bolivia) in various multilateral environmental agreements, as well as an advisor to the Bolivian National Competent Environment Authority. She also served on the Ad Hoc Expert Technical Group on Farmers' Rights of the International Treaty on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, the Ad Hoc Expert Technical Group on Socio-Economic Considerations of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, and the Compliance Committee of the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Her work, as scholar and practitioner, is also dedicated to gender equity as well as to indigenous peoples and peasant rights.

John Wilson

John Wilson is a free range facilitator and activist in East and Southern Africa, with strong links to West Africa. He has worked with many different organizations at different levels -- from community-based organisations to regional and continental networks, to help facilitate a stronger food sovereignty movement in Africa. Increasingly, he is focused on helping to catalyze and support collaborative and strategic work on agroecology and food sovereignty. In recent years, he has also become a strong proponent and facilitator for a principles-based approach to development work. Working with very complex situations requires a way of decision-making and assessment based on guidance rather than goals; Principles Focused Evaluation has been a strong source of inspiration and experience for his practice.

Jyoti Fernandes

Jyoti Fernandes is an agroecological smallholder farmer based in Dorset, UK. She runs a micro-dairy on her farm and produces a wide range of products from cheese and meats to cider, juice, and preserves. The farm is part of a local smallholders’ cooperative that shares collective processing facilities and markets the products of the members’ smallholdings collectively. Jyoti coordinates the Policy, Lobbying and Campaigning work of the Landworkers Alliance, a small farmers union in the UK, which is a member of La Via Campesina. 

Kevin Chang

Kevin Chang is from Kahalu’u, O’ahu, Hawai’i and serves as the Executive Director of Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo (KUA) a capacity building and network facilitation and mobilization mechanism founded by and for rural Native Hawaiian community-driven biocultural resource management initiatives. Kevin is of Chinese, Irish and other ancestry and grew up at the convergence of urban and rural life in O'ahu, Hawai’i. He spent the last few decades working on the social, cultural, and environmental justice issues of his community on land and in the ocean, both locally and internationally. He is also an attorney who has worked in litigation, entertainment law, and business. He is married to Alma Siria Vega de Chang of ciudad Obregon, Sonora, Mexico, and is the lead singer and songwriter of the band Kupaʻāina (citizen of the land).

Lim Li Ching

Lim Li Ching is a Senior Researcher at Third World Network (TWN). TWN is an independent non-profit international research and advocacy organization involved in bringing about a greater articulation of the needs, aspirations and rights of the peoples in the South and in promoting just, equitable and ecological development. Li Ching coordinates its biodiversity, biosafety and sustainable agriculture work. She has a B.Sc. in Ecology and an M.Phil. in Development Studies. She is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and has contributed to various international publications on sustainable agriculture.

Milka Chepkorir

Milka Chepkorir is a young Indigenous woman from the Sengwer peoples in Cherang’any Hills, Kenya. For the last six years she has been working with her community to address land tenure issues in their ancestral lands, the Embobut and Kabolet forests. Due to lack of recognition of her community land rights, the community has faced human rights violations through evictions by the government of Kenya, all in the name of forest conservation. Milka has a special interest in gender issues and has been working with women and elders in her community to ensure women are included in the community land rights struggles. Together with the women in Embobut forest, she helped develop a cultural centre where the community hopes to carry out indigenous education classes to educate the youth and children about the Sengwer indigenous knowledge and systems, most of which have been lost or are diminishing. She is currently completing her Masters in Gender and Development Studies at the University of Nairobi. Her specific focus is on gender relations in community forest conservation among Indigenous Peoples. Milka coordinates the “Defending Territories of Life” stream of work at the ICCA Consortium. She was previously the Coordinator of Community Land Action NOW! (CLAN), a Kenyan movement of communities working to register their lands as community lands under the Community Land Act 2016.

Sridhar Radhakrishnan

Sridhar Radhakrishnan is a Steering Committee member in the India-wide Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture (ASHA-Kisan Swaraj). He is also a Director in a honorary role, in Thirunelly Agri Producer Company, a Farmer Producer Organization based in Kerala, and serves as a Consultant with Asar Social Impact Advisors. An engineer by education and an environmentalist by passion and practice, Sridhar works closely with various agriculture and environmental groups as well as eco-centric startups and enterprises across India. He is notably a founding member and co-coordinator in the Kerala state-wide collective of environmental groups, Kerala Paristhithi Aikya Vedhi, and served as a coordinator (policy and campaign) and administrator of the Save our Rice Campaign-India. He was also Programme Director of Thanal, a voluntary organization working on matters related to environment, agriculture, and climate change, as well as an honorary advisor for the Consumer Research, Education, Action, Training and Empowerment (CREATE) Trust in Tamilnadu. He is a founder member and continues to be associated with the Coalition for a GM Free India. Sridhar also works closely on state policies. He writes and comments on agriculture, food, and environment policy and facilitates two policy dialogue platforms - Agri Insight & EcoDialogue Kerala. He has authored two books related to environment and resource use, and co-authored the publication “A Green Print for Sustainable Kerala – Lessons for Existence.” Sridhar lives in a mud and bamboo (COSTFORD) home, with a tiny food garden, with his wife and son at Karakulam, a village panchayath on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram city, Kerala.

Tabara Ndiaye

Tabara Ndiaye has more than 15 years of experience in international philanthropy supporting rural women and their organizations in French-speaking Africa in the promotion of agroecology and the transition to agroecology. Tabara is active in various platforms at local, sub regional and regional levels of the African continent on rural women’s seeds and knowledge, land rights, climate justice, feminist agroecology and healthy food systems. She has close links with the culture and environment of rural women, and understands the challenges they face as well as their prospects for the future. Previously, she worked with New Field Foundation for ten years, developing its grantmaking program for rural women and their organizations in French-speaking West Africa. Tabara is a Program Officer at the American Jewish World Service, responsible for Land Water & Climate Justice Programs in Senegal and DR Congo. She is a board member of the Global Fund for Women and the West African Network for Peacebuilding, and is an advisor to the Africa Women’s Collaborative for Healthy Food Systems.

Jeanne Zoundjihekpon

Through her academic research and collaboration with civil society organizations, Jeanne has been involved in environmental protection in West Africa – and specifically biodiversity conservation – for several decades. Her work has included the assessment and regulation of GMOs in French-speaking African countries, and the last Ph.D. thesis she supervised was on the sexual reproduction of yams in Benin’s agroecological zones. Jeanne is a founding member of JINUKUN (a local network for the sustainable use of biodiversity in Benin), and COPAGEN (Coalition for the Protection of African Genetic Heritage), which includes the countries of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Bissau Guinea, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Togo and Benin) and Guinea. In 2022, Jeanne resigned from JINUKUN, but remained a member of the Federation of AgroEcologists of Benin (FAEB).

Daniel Moss
Co-Director

Daniel serves as Executive Director at the Agroecology Fund. Trained as a community organizer, he strengthened tenant organizations in public housing in Boston and then lived in El Salvador and Mexico for five years, working in support of social movements defending rights to land and water. In addition to work with the Agroecology Fund, he collaborates with the Equitable Food Initiative as an on-farm trainer and with Latin American water utilities to strengthen watershed conservation strategies. He holds a Master's degree in City Planning from MIT and writes frequently on food and water issues for traditional and online media.

Angela Cordeiro 
Co-Director

Angela Cordeiro is an agronomist from Florianopolis, Brazil. She has an M.Sc. in Use and Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources from the University of Birmingham, UK. She started her professional career in the non-governmental sector, providing technical support to agroecology projects, with a focus on community management of agrobiodiversity. Angela has more than two decades of experience as a consultant, and has worked with NGOs, the Brazilian government, and UN agencies such as the UNDP, FAO, and WFP. In the last 15 years, Angela has worked extensively on program/project monitoring and evaluation, in Brazil and internationally. Part of the Agroecology Fund’s Advisory Board from 2015 to 2019, she joined the team as Program Director in October 2019 before becoming its second co-director. 

Minhaj Ameen

Director of Strategic Operations, Finance and Administration

Min is passionate about promoting sustainable living to address the several planetary issues we face today, particularly climate change and biodiversity loss. He holds a degree in engineering and earned an MBA from the Manchester Business School, UK. His conviction that humanity will truly thrive if we alleviate suffering for all living beings has led him to co-create and direct initiatives in renewable energy, solid waste management, afforestation, water conservation, agriculture and education. He helped set up the National Coalition for Natural Farming, the largest network of its kind in India, to advance the adoption of agroecology at scale. 

Allison Finnegan-Kihega

Grant Lead

Allison Finnegan-Kihega has a decade of experience in project management, international development, and grantmaking. Allison resides in Colorado, initially the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ute Tribes' territories. She has worked in direct care with organizations supporting at-risk youth and seniors aging in place. During her undergraduate degree, she was the first student to be permitted to fulfill her practicum hours overseas. She spent a year in Indonesia, developing and completing her placement. Upon returning to the United States, she continued to travel to sovereign nations with her husband and young child, who are O-Gah-Pah Nation members. These work and personal experiences have led to a passion for supporting food sovereignty and equitable access to healthy foods that nurture the Earth. Allison completed her Masters in Development Practice in 2020 with a thesis focused on environmental justice and the role of backbone organizations. She has since been working with international grantmaking organizations to provide administrative and programmatic support for a diverse portfolio of Advisory Boards globally.

Catherine Dodaro

Operations Assistant

Catherine Dodaro is an agronomist from Laval University, Canada. She currently resides in Peru and is finalizing a master's degree in sociology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. Since 2017, she has been dedicated to agroecology and food sovereignty from a political and feminist perspective, working both in Argentina and Peru. She is the co-founder and current academic coordinator of Alsakuy Agroecológica, a space emerging as a youth movement advocating for the transformation of food systems. She has a particular interest in the socio-cultural elements of the agrarian sector, including its artistic manifestations, popular pedagogies and the fight for gender equality.

Bruno Ganzo

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Assistant

Bruno is a Brazilian agronomist graduated from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), in Florianopolis. His studies went deeper into plant genetic resources, and he had the opportunity to participate in research groups on this topic. His first contact with the Agroecology Fund was as an intern in early 2020, when he participated in the monitoring of the COVID-19 Emergency Response Program call for grant applications.

AFSA

The Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) is a broad alliance of different civil society actors that are part of the struggle for food sovereignty and agroecology in Africa. Its 30 members represent smallholder farmers, pastoralists, hunter/gatherers, indigenous peoples; faith based institutions, and environmentalists from across 50 African countries. AFSA aims to be a strong voice shaping policy on the continent in the area of community rights, family farming, promotion of traditional knowledge and natural resource management.

Groundswell International

Groundswell International is a partnership of local organizations and their network of grassroots community groups in West Africa, the Americas and South Asia. Their programs catalyze the transition from unsustainable agriculture and extractive economies to regenerative, just farming and local food systems.

La Via Campesina - GRAIN - ETC Group

This collaborative defends and amplifies peasant-led agroecology and seeds agendas, globally and in farmers’ fields, by strengthening the capacities and strategies of farmers movements and their allies. It analyzes, influences, and holds accountable relevant policies and practices of governments, agencies and the private sector through information and advocacy work. 

IITC

The International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) was founded in June 1974. It is an organization of Indigenous Peoples from North, Central, South America, the Caribbean and the Pacific working for the Sovereignty and Self Determination of Indigenous Peoples and the recognition and protection of Indigenous Rights, Treaties, Traditional Cultures and Sacred Lands. Food Sovereignty is one of its core program areas. It works to restore, revitalize, protect and strengthen local food systems through sharing seeds, knowledge, practices and methods among Indigenous food producers. It organizes food sovereignty gatherings in Indigenous communities and promotes knowledge exchanges, networking and movement building.