Name
Whitney Jaye
Title
Co-Executive Director
Whitney Jaye is a farmer, organizer, agrarian artist, memory worker, and mother whose love for the land and sea stem back deep into her life and lineage. Her roots are in Wilmington, North Carolina, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Southernmost point of the Cape Fear River, and where her family has been for nine generations. She sees her work through the lens of Black Southern lifeways that (re)center agrarianism, and through the ancestral memories and practices of coastal Carolinian culture.
Whitney Jaye has done a variety of food systems work and organizing, from farming and youth agricultural education, to programmatic and cooperative development. She has designed and implemented a variety of projects and programs with diverse partners, including with Greening Youth Foundation, Atlanta Botanical Garden, Morehouse School of Medicine, Ashoka Changemakers, and West Atlanta Watershed Alliance. She has served on the Leadership Team of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA), the Host Committee for the Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners Conference (BUGS) in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Steering Committee of the Southwest Atlanta Growers Cooperative (SWAG). She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Boggs Rural Life Center in Keysville, Georgia, and owns/manages Sunbird Flowers, a small farm producing sustainably grown cut flowers.
Whitney Jaye serves as the Co-Executive Director and institutional steward of SAAFON, where she anchors development, operations and strategy, and works to ensure that the organization’s offerings and partnerships reflect the needs of our farmers, and aligns with our mission. She is grateful to be in service to the vision of our founders, and in the legacy of farmers who are committed to being in right relationship to the lands they steward. She deeply values the brilliance, spirit, and abundance of Black Southern agrarian magic, and has been a witness to its power to transform and heal.