Announcement Letter from new Executive Director, Gabrielle Fields

Dear Franklinton Farms community and neighbors,

I’m humbled to introduce myself as the new Executive Director of Franklinton Farms. I can’t express my gratitude enough to the Board of Directors for their confidence in my leadership at such a pivotal time, and for the passionate team and neighbors that make Franklinton Farms a committed example of what it means to be a nourishing neighbor.

I’m a native of St. Louis, Missouri (Go Blues!) and have lived in Ohio for five years while achieving my Masters of Divinity and building sustainable collaborative systems between community partners. I’ve been a higher education professional for a little under a decade and, more recently, a consultant working with urban farmers, faith-based communities, and nonprofit organizations to build community through food initiatives. Consulting afforded me the opportunity to get to know Columbus through intentional relationship building and I was captivated by Franklinton Farm’s story of origin - a group of neighborhood residents committed to the well-being of the neighborhood through environmental sustainability and social justice efforts that mirrored the work of the ancestors that came before us.

During Black History Month of 2021, Franklinton Farms produced a blog series titled, “Recognizing Black History: Black People Who Changed The Course of Modern Agriculture.” My formal introduction to agriculture began with some of the narratives shared in that blog series along with Rev. Vernon Johns, George Baker, and Charles and Shirley Sherrod. What inspires me most about these ancestors of agriculture, was their ability to cultivate relationships with people in their community while developing models to collaboratively revolutionize agriculture through innovation. I’d been searching for a community who shared the same desire to innovate new approaches to address the economic, environmental, and social challenges that impacts us all and did not have to look any further than Franklinton Farms.

It was Maya Angelou who said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Franklinton feels like home and I am excited to be your neighbor.

In solidarity,

Gabrielle