Advocacy

The James Beard Foundation

chair of the leadership awards committee

The James Beard Foundation’s Leadership Awards spotlight the important and complex realms of sustainability, food justice, and public health. They raise awareness of these timely issues by celebrating the visionaries responsible for creating a healthier, safer, and more equitable, and sustainable food system.

The Leadership Awards recognize specific outstanding initiatives as well as bodies of work and lifetime achievement. The excellence of work, innovation in approach, and scale of impact within a community or the nation are among the criteria used to select the recipients. Honorees are chosen by a volunteer committee of experts and the cohort of past Leadership Award recipients. 

- www.Jamesbeard.org/Leadershipawards

Space on Ryder Farm

co-vice chair of the board

is a nonprofit residency program and organic farm located on the grounds of a 226-year-old family homestead in Putnam County, New York, just an hour north of New York City. SPACE’s mission is to create an environment singular in its ability to invigorate artists and innovators and their work, and to contribute to the sustainability and resourceful preservation of one of the oldest organic family farms on the East Coast.

- www.SpaceOnRyderFarm.Org

On the board of SÜPRMARKT’s non-profit, SÜPRSEED.

Board member

SÜPRMARKT provides produce to those affected by food apartheid in South LA.

Lakisha has volunteered and worked in a freelance capacity with SÜPRMARKT. Her contributions ranged from helping with daily operations to helping produce special fundraising events as well as SÜPRFEST, South Central’s first vegan festival.