No. 06Our founders
The people behind the work.
Community Agriculture Corporation was founded by people who fell in love with agriculture early and never let it go.
"My grandmother's garden served many purposes. It taught patience. It nourished. It gave strength, distraction, focus, life, and love. She grew a lot of what we ate, and I think that shaped me more than I realized at the time. There was something grounding about knowing that part of what we needed came from our own hands and our own land."
After Hurricane Dorian destroyed my family’s home, I started thinking more seriously about what it means for a community to be able to take care of itself.
What do people actually have to fall back on? What survives when something goes wrong? What makes a place strong enough that people can rebuild without having to start completely from zero?
I studied geography at the University of Florida, with a concentration in environmental geosciences, and went on to coordinate programs for a US local government program. I was responsible for programming across four sites, with a budget and people depending on me to make it work. I've also worked on forest and land issues, researching how financial institutions fund activities that affect communities and the land they depend on.
Co-founding Community Agriculture Corporation with Raine gave me a way to bring that experience into something we could build ourselves. My background helps me understand the research behind what we want to do and the day-to-day work of getting a community program off the ground. It also gives me a starting point for asking better questions of the farmers we hope to work alongside.
I do not want to spend my lifetime talking about what communities need from a distance when I could be helping them build something people can point to and say, “this made our town better,” or “this gave us something we didn't have before.”
"I've wanted to build a life around agriculture for almost as long as I've been old enough to understand what that meant. "
I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and moved to metro Atlanta when I was young, but somewhere along the way, I developed a fascination with farming, homesteading, and the idea of creating something meaningful from the land. I was the kid researching how to raise animals, grow food, and become more self-sufficient, always looking for opportunities to get my hands dirty and learn something new. Through 4-H and every agricultural experience I could find, that fascination became something much more permanent.
That passion shaped my decisions long before Community Agriculture Corporation existed. I initially attended Berry College because I believed it would be the best place to immerse myself in agriculture, then transferring to the University of Georgia turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made. At UGA, I built on my practical experience through a formal education in animal science while also studying political science, history, and international affairs. What began as a personal love for farming gradually developed into a much broader understanding of the systems surrounding it.
The more I learned, the more I realized that loving agriculture and making a sustainable living from it are two very different things.
Through my work in public administration, legislative research, agricultural policy, food systems, and local government, I've seen how deeply farmers' livelihoods are influenced by decisions made far beyond the farm gate. We talk constantly about supporting farmers, protecting farmland, and strengthening local food systems. But those goals mean very little if the people actually doing the farming cannot afford to put them into practice.
That realization is a large part of why I founded Community Agriculture Corporation in 2023. I didn't want to spend my entire career just studying the challenges facing American agriculture. I wanted to help build something that could actually address them.
What excites me most about CAC is that we're not trying to prescribe a single solution for every farmer or build an idealized version of what agriculture ought to look like. We're creating a place to experiment, learn, and demonstrate what actually works: a working agricultural environment where regenerative practices, animal husbandry, conservation, and new production methods can be evaluated not only for their environmental benefits, but for their economic realities.
I want CAC to help make agriculture more accessible to people who have the same curiosity and passion I had growing up, but who may not have the land, resources, connections, or opportunities to turn that interest into a livelihood. I want established farmers to see an organization interested in solving real problems alongside them, not telling them how to operate from a distance. And I want families to have more meaningful choices about the food they purchase, the producers they support, and the agricultural future they help sustain.
And I can't think of anything more meaningful to spend my life working toward.
Two people, one conviction. Agriculture should be a life more people can actually build.
The future of agriculture should offer more opportunities to the people willing to grow it.
Whether you're a farmer, researcher, educator, business, or neighbor, there's a place for your perspective in CAC's future.