Shaquana Boykin (she/her), Secretary, has many years of experience working and volunteering in the nonprofit sector. Shaquana was an Urban Farm Educator and Manager at Northeast Brooklyn Housing Development Cooperation (NEBHDCO). She is a native Brooklynite who has lived in Fort Greene Brooklyn, New York since 2009. She earned an Associate’s Degree in Liberal Arts at CUNY’s Kingsborough Community College & earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Legal Studies at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology.
At the young age of 16, she began volunteering at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and organizing with ACORN as a Canvass Field Manager. Shaquana is a certified Brooklyn Urban Gardener (BUG) and received the 2013 Natural Leader award through Children & Nature network. She graduated from Public Allies New York & the Center for Neighborhood Leadership Community Organizing Apprenticeship in June 2015. In that role, she organized around tenant rights with the Flatbush Tenant Coalition together where they won a new Brooklyn Housing Court building that will better serve the community. Before coming to the Central Brooklyn Food Coop, her last position was as Myrtle Avenue’s Mayor Office Engagement Coordinator for Ingersoll Houses. There, she led a group of 20 residents and 10+ agencies & CBOs under the Mayor’s Action Plan (MAP) launched in 2014. Her role was to lead residents & partners through a planning process to improve safety at Ingersoll Houses. Additionally, she is a community leader with OYUnited, a Bike Share Advocate, the Chair of Programming as a Board member of Fort Greene Park Conversancy, and serves on Public Allies Alumni Board & Children & Nature Network Young Leaders Advisory Committee.
Rae Gomes (she/her), Chair, is a mother, writer, food justice activist, and organizer based in Brooklyn, NY.
She is a proud founding board member and former co-chair of the Outreach and Membership Committee of the Central Brooklyn Food Cooperative. She continues to support food sovereignty work locally including working toward a Central Brooklyn Food Hub and work with Brownsville East New York Food Advisory Council. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher College. Her writing often includes issues of race and activism and has been published in The Nation magazine, AlterNet, Colorlines, and The Root among others.
As an organizer, she works at the intersection of race and food justice to address health disparities in under-resourced communities. Employing a framework of community self-determination, she works with local residents to cultivate power and ownership over the systems that have failed to serve them.
Simone Herbin
Raina Kennedy (she/her), Treasurer
Abigail Merced