Maya Marie S.

Project Founder, Lead Collaborator, and Curriculum Writer/Creative Director (she/her)

Maya is a Black urban farmer and foodways educator from Baltimore, MD (Piscataway, Cherokee, and Lumbee lands) who’s called Brooklyn, NY (Canarsee, Lenni Lenape lands) her home for over 10 years, with her family’s roots in the DMV, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

She's invested in creating accessible spaces for Black and brown people to learn about food and health that center their personal stories and food traditions. She believes that food education can be a vehicle for communities of color to engage with their history and health while tapping into their power for social change.

Her interests in food have led her to earn a culinary arts degree, to apprentice at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems at UC Santa Cruz where she studied Ecological and Sustainable Horticulture, and to study community health at Hunter College and become a Build. Unlearn. Decolonize. and CoFED Racial Justice Fellow alum.

When Maya isn’t farming she continues to combine her love of cooking, agriculture, science, and history by pouring her heart into Deep Routes and creating unpublished photography pieces for her personal project Seeds & Receipts. She’s also a former founding member of the Central Brooklyn-based culinary collective Beautifully Fed Food.