I've had the pleasure of working in the field of community gardening, urban greening, and vacant land reuse for more than 20 years. My career began in my hometown, Flint, Michigan, where I co-founded the Flint Urban Gardening and Land Use Corporation and developed the Clean and Green program for the Genesee County Land Bank. In 2001 I moved to the City of Detroit to work with Detroit Summer, a program of the Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership and the Detroit Agriculture Network to develop urban agriculture opportunities for Detroiters of all ages. For a decade I served as the Director of Urban Agriculture and Openspace at The Greening of Detroit where I planted thousands of trees, supported a growing network of urban gardens and operated multiple urban farms and nationally recognized programs.Since 2013 I've been a co-director at Keep Growing Detroit, an urban agriculture focused organization working toward a vision of a food sovereign city where the majority of fruits and vegetables that Detroiters consume are grown within the city limits by residents.