Merelis Catalina Ortiz

Contributing author and creative.

Merelis is a phenomenal Kiskeyan/Dominican chef, kitchen magician, and educator born and raised on the land of the Munsee Lenape people a.k.a Queens, New York. She has almost a decade of experience in food sovereignty work and is committed to the healing and collective liberation of Black, Indigenous, and people of color. She co-founded the Dominican plant-based coop Woke Foods in 2015 and is an alum of CoFED’s 2018 Racial Justice Fellowship where she launched the People y Alimentos Solidarity (PAS) program, a bilingual offering that focuses on building solidarity among Black, Indigenous, and Latinx-heritage people through land and food. 

Merelis is also committed to healing and building solidarity amongst Dominicans and Haitians. As part of the InCultured Company community, she has co-facilitated in their Decolonizing Hispaniola workshop, which deconstructs the divisions that have defined the diaspora and promotes transformational change in the next generation of leaders. In 2020 she served as a founding member of the Central Brooklyn-based culinary collective Beautifully Fed Food, and is now the Culinary Nutrition Instructor and Program Manager at Lantern Community Services.