Coordinating Team

We are food activists with a passion for the food system and racial justice. We are all currently volunteers to this cause and hope that we are serving our fellow farmers and friends with new opportunities and seats at old and new tables.

Sammie Ardito Rivera

Sammie Ardito Rivera (Leech Lake and White Earth Ojibwe) was born and raised in the Twin Cities and spent another ten years learning and working with communities across the United States. She received her Bachelor’s in Applied Indigenous Studies with an emphasis in

Traditional Ecological Knowledge at Northern Arizona University and her movement education in the San Francisco Bay Area. She currently resides on 17 acres of land with her family in western Wisconsin where they operate Sin Fronteras Farm and Food. As Senior Project Director
for Marnita’s Table she ensures the project teams effectively deliver the model of Intentional Social Interaction to the communities that need it most. She is also a full spectrum doula and a novice herbalist. She is passionate about creating resilient, sustainable, healthy, and just
communities for her child and for all our future generations.

Sophia Benrud

Sophia Benrud is a Black multiracial queer community organizer, postpartum doula and chef currently residing in Minneapolis, MN. Sophia is the environmental justice organizer and cofounder of  Black Visions a Black led Queer and Trans centering organization committed to strengthening community and community led safely —building connections between BIPOC climate and environmental, food, and healing justice. Sophia is committed to transforming the current movement by centering communities directly impacted by these issues while building stronger movements to break down systemic violence; and a co-founder of Divine Natural Ancestry, a project of 2 seasons that supports community through tools, supplies and knowledge for growing food in BIPOC communities. Sophia is a board member of Spiral Collective an organization supporting people in reproduction, abortion and loss.  During the past two summers Sophia has facilitated youth projects and programs focused on environmental justice through the sierra student coalition.

Michael Cheney

As an activist, youth advocate, organizer, and cultural artist I have dedicated most of my adult life to implementing transformative initiatives and educational programming that provide real solutions to real problems for real people.  
What started as a catchy jingo grew into a social justice movement, grew into an initiative promoting educational reform, grew into an afterschool community education program, grew into an emerging nonprofit that supports the development of youth and families in educational initiatives centered around horticulture, entrepreneurship, marketing and promotions, "Project Sweetie Pie" continues to plant the “seeds of change’. In 2010 when North High was under siege by the public school administrators that were elected to lead it, Project Sweetie Pie was born. We started as an act of social justice and social protest to save North High from the proposed threat of closure. We have grown into a progressive non-profit that serves as an incubator of sustainable thought and action centered on horticulture, urban farming, and green business creation Contrary to public opinion, we have seen the “green movement” steadily grow and continue to thrive in north Minneapolis. More importantly we have  played a key role in growing and providing the leadership and the vision for the movement.  Our mission is to inform, infuse, inspire, and instruct. "Project Sweetie Pie"- Breaking stereotypes, giving voice to the voiceless, transforming communities historically socially engineered to be consumers we continue to lead the way.  "Project Sweetie Pie" the story of a city that came together-worked together on a common goal, for the common good of the youth and families of it's community. For it takes a village to raise a child.

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Zoe Hollomon

Zoe has been a community and food justice organizer for over 18 years.  She started her food justice work in Buffalo, NY working with youth to grow food, build relationships between farmers and urban communities, and impact decision-making in food, farming and health related policy.  Since coming to Minnesota, she has worked with many food justice and farming organizations in North and South Minneapolis, Rondo, Frogtown, among others. She helped found the Good Food Purchasing Twin Cities Coalition in 2017 and led that coalition in changing Minneapolis Public School District food purchasing practices to better support health and nutrition, fair labor, environmental sustainability, local economy, and humane treatment of animals.  
Zoe is the MN State Organizing Director for the Pesticide Action Network, and works with farmers, scientists and grassroots groups to address racial inequities and pesticide related harm inflicted by our food system and corporate agriculture.  Zoe is part of the Black Liberation and Abolitionist Cohort (BLAC) and works with other black organizers in MN to abolish institutions that threaten black lives and develop systems that honor them. Zoe was a Green For All Fellow in 2011, she has served on the Homegrown Minneapolis Food Policy Council, and does consulting in Racial Equity in Food Systems. Zoe received her B.S. in Urban & Regional Planning from Cornell University in 2001 and an M.S. from Southern New Hampshire University in Community Economic Development in 2007.

Co-Founders (2020)

Vera F. Allen

Hindolo Pokawa