Who we are

Interim Executive Director
joe@epnifarm.org
Since 2020, Joe has fought for community control of the Roof Depot site, bringing years of experience as a community organizer and coalition-builder. Before EPNI, he served as the chair of the DFL Native People’s Caucus.

Finance and Development Director
daniel@epnifarm.org
Daniel writes grants and speaks with philanthropists and investors; while also striving to protect the neighborhood from predatory financial interests.

He was born and raised in St. Louis, MO, just 500 miles south on the Mississippi– or what he considers the heart of the North American continent: where the Cahokia mounds rise, and the Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio Rivers reach the mighty Mississippi.

He studied the burgeoning field of Ecological Economics at Hampshire College in Massachusetts.

As he got involved with the EPNI movement in the winter of 2022, he began to realize how colonialism has seeped into the physical infrastructures and the psychic landscapes of our society. He started seeing the Roof Depot as a pressure point for a wholesale paradigm shift. His adventures with EPNI have brought him to learn about the viability of alternative economies and the necessity of reparations. He feels honored every day to help build this new and real attempt at equity.

He wound his way to East Phillips through divine synchronicity. Some call it dumb luck. But now he is now a proud East Phillips resident.

Fill out EPNI’s volunteer form to learn more and get involved with the Fundraising Team, which meets every Monday evening on Zoom.

Communications Director
darby@epnifarm.org
Darby showed up to an EPNI meeting in 2022, where someone suggested forming a communications team. She has been helping to raise awareness and share stories about this visionary project since.

Before joining EPNI’s staff in 2024, Darby worked around the Twin Cities media landscape as a photographer, journalist and public radio devotee. 

She believes in the transformative power that is generated when we deepen our relationships with the land and each other. This project gives her incredible amounts of hope!

Darby can often be found chatting on porches, running around town, or sitting by a river.

Fill out EPNI’s volunteer form to learn more and get involved with the Communications Team, which meets every Tuesday evening on Zoom.

Outreach Director
sean@epnifarm.org
With a background in environmental sciences and environmental policy, Sean is an organizer, movement artist, and mutual aid practitioner who has spent the past eight years building community power, organizing, and mobilizing Minnesotans.

From getting historic candidates into office, to passing legislation, to galvanizing neighbors for monumental issue campaigns, Sean’s advocacy centers youth organizing, education, environmental justice and housing justice.

The outreach team engages people in East Phillips to ensure their dreams and desires are accurately reflected along every step of this project. 

Sean believes this project will be the embodiment of Environmental Justice and will set foundational groundwork for subsequent generations to not just barely make it by, but to thrive in East Phillips and South Minneapolis.

Fill out EPNI’s volunteer form to learn more and get involved with the Outreach Team, which meets every Wednesday afternoon on Zoom.

Outdoor Farm Coordinator
kieran@epnifarm.org
Kieran Morris is a community organizer, farmer and canoe guide, specializing in Green and Blue work, bringing practical skills alongside traditional knowledge and grassroots mentality to connect people with the land and water.

At EPNI, Kieran coordinates the Outdoor Farm project, which grows produce and medicine at sites across East Phillips, and hosts free educational workshops. In his spare time, he writes fiction and poetry, hunts and fishes, wanders with his partner, draws landscapes, practices and teaches a couple of martial arts and struggles to learn blues guitar.

Fill out EPNI’s volunteer form to learn more and get involved with the Outdoor Farm Team, which meets every Friday (on hiatus until March)

Plant Scientist
forest@epnifarm.org
Forest Hunt is Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe and they were born and raised in Minneapolis, MN. They have a B.S. in Plant Science and Agroecology from UMN and they are working on their M.S. in Applied Plant Sciences from UMN. Their greatest passion is sustainable agriculture and working to make food systems that benefit humans and our animal and insect relatives alike.

Fill out EPNI’s volunteer form to learn more and get involved with the Outdoor Farm Team, which meets every Friday

Farm Team Food Justice Historian
chino@epnifarm.org
As a Food Justice Historian, Chino hopes to ensure community voices are heard and used to cultivate a world we build collectively by working on the documentation and preservation of the East Phillips community narrative on food systems, food justice movement, and the development of the EPNI Roof Depot Urban Farm. Chino has a B.A. in History with focuses in Pre-conquest Mesoamerica and Racial Justice in Urban Education. 

Chino is of Nahua Mexica descendancy, an identity that has shaped their work and study to be dedicated towards shaping Indigenous historical pedagogy, Indigenous land stewardship, and storytelling. Seasonally, Chino is a seed farmer at Dream of Wild Health, learning the importance of seed stories, ancestral ways of land stewardship, and learning to care for plants as our relatives.

Farm Team Food Justice Historian
willa@epnifarm.org
Willa grew up in Minneapolis and has been passionate about being connected to the roots and histories of this land. Willa is an artist, storyteller, and enthusiastic learner. In their work they ask the question “what is collaborative storytelling”, this question has led them to different art centered projects and explorations in communities where they learn about the relationship between people and the land they take care of. Willa hopes to build and be a part of a community that creates free access to growing food while fostering learning and joy in people's lives.

Farm Team Community Liaison
eddy@epnifarm.org
Eddy grew up in North St Paul, and got his B.A. in Biology, Society, and the Environment. He comes from Guatemalan and Swedish roots, and his families have strong ties to agriculture, from farming on milpas in mountain valleys to ranching cattle in the plains. He has worked on organic farms both urban and rural, growing culturally relevant foods while taking time to listen and tend to the land.

He continues to grow and learn with the farmers at Tamales y Bicicletas Urban Farm, and also teaches environmental science afterschool at Migizi, both just a few blocks from the Roof Depot. He hopes to bring his experience in community organizing, environmental justice, and agriculture to further EPNI’s efforts in supporting the health of the community.

Farm Team Community Liaison
arcadian@epnifarm.org
Arcadian’s Taíno ancestors have passed down a passion for storytelling in various formats. They usually move from state to state, following where the story leads. After nearly a year living in southern Mexico and working the land, they discovered the stories the land has to tell if one were to stop and listen. Being a former resident of East Phillips and having the intention of making Minnesota their home, working with EPNI to make it safe for future generations to tell their stories 

They are so motivated by storytelling that they have a published series analyzing colonialism through a sapphic fantasy lens, and they run a publishing company to encourage others to tell their stories.

Operations Consultant
delaney@epnifarm.org
Since high school, Delaney has enjoyed bringing people together to explore models of community care and collective freedom. This has included promoting the honoring of treaties,  facilitating ongoing practices on re-humanizing our bodies, hosting nonviolent communication practice groups, and connecting people internationally to support justice and sustainability. 

Working at EPNI gives her a new way to support sustainable systems based on deep care for (not destroying) each other and the earth. It’s a concrete model bringing the neighborhood  better food, cleaner energy, greater resilience, and overall hope. Most of her work at EPNI involves helping teams develop, align, and implement goal-relevant activities.

Past lives have included practicing law, nonprofit leadership, couples’ mediation, and studying both physics and theology.  She’s lived in four different countries and been heavily influenced by their cultures. 

She also enjoys time with loved-ones (human and canine), on trains or skis, near rivers or oceans, or hanging at home. She lives near the Mississippi River and B’Dote, where her ancestors have lived since the 1870s and the Dakota have lived for thousands of years (Saint Paul).

Cassandra (Niiwin Muck-Wa Ikwe – Four Bears Woman) was born and raised in East Phillips at Little Earth and is part of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe. After losing her eldest son, Trinidad, as a result of toxic pollution in East Phillips, Cassandra is doing everything she can to stop the destruction of the Roof Depot building. Read more

Clarence is the founder of Blue Water Farms and a community organizer who is focused on sustainability. He is currently one of the founders and president of the Minnesota Aquaculture Association. He serves as secretary of EPNI. Read more

Karen Clark, a resident of East Phillips Neighborhood for more than 40 years, is a former State Representative, and the Activist Executive Director of the Women's Environmental Institute, a volunteer position.

A longtime supporter of East Phillips, Dean founded DJR Architecture in 1985 in the East Phillips Neighborhood with an emphasis on affordable housing and community development. Read more

Abah is the founder and executive director of South East Homes (SEH), the first East African focused program in North America specializing in chemical dependency and mental health. Abah has helped hundreds of individuals by providing resources and a supportive cultural community for their recovery journey. Read more

Carlos grew up in East Phillips where he was deeply rooted and cherished in community. For years, he worked at Tamales y Bicicletas, connecting youth to the life affirming nature of urban farming. While leading biking tours of East Phillips, Carlos would share the story of East Phillips as a place of imposed pollution that and community resilience. He joined the EPNI board in high school, where he fostered the community’s vision with care. His contributions will forever be woven into the fabric of this project, and the neighborhood of East Phillips.

In 2024, Brad was voted to fill his late wife Carol’s position on the role. For the last 30 years, Carol and Brad dedicated their lives to improving the East Phillips neighborhood. They have raised children, overseen housing developments, mentored youth, and managed neighborhood beautification within East Phillips. Read more

Steve has been a neighborhood activist and community organizer for decades, supporting racial and environmental justice in East Phillips. He is focused on reducing harmful pollution in East Phillips and growing community participation in local government. Read more