Karen Washington is a community activist, a community gardener and board member of the New York Botanical Gardens. Karen has worked with Bronx neighborhoods to turn empty lots into community gardens. She is a member of the La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, helped launched a City Farms Market, is a Just Food board member, a board member and former president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition and she co- founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS).

Leah Chase is

Georgia native Nicole A. Taylor has been an artisan candy maker, an activist, and a social media maven, and currently hosts Hot Grease, a food culture podcast and is the principal of NAT Media. She has contributed to First We Feast, Cherry Bombe, Amtrak, Southern Foodways Alliance, Travel Noire and her recipes are featured on Colorlines, Design*Sponge and in the America I Am: Pass it Down Cookbook and The Way We Ate: 100 Chefs Celebrate a Century at the American Table cookbook. Nicole self-publishes the Modern Travelers' Green Zine, a print publication focused on food + travel. In 2014, she produced a short documentary on the desegration of an Athens, GA drive-in restaurant.

A member of Black Urban Growers and James Beard Foundation. Nicole worked for the Brooklyn Food Coalition, served on the fundraising committee for the Vendy Awards NYC, instructed young adults at Kingsborough Community College's Project Rise (a GED & internship program that weaves in urban farming & food culture) and facilitated media landscape workshops for the The LAMP NYC. 

Nicole's first title The UpSouth Cookbook: Chasing Dixie in a Brooklyn Kitchen (Countryman Press/WW Norton) will be available this October.