Cooperation Vermont
Community Land Trust
Board of Directors

Clarence Tanager (they/them) has lived and worked in Northern/Central Vermont since 2014. They are an EMT currently working in rural EMS in the Northeast Kingdom, with previous work experiences ranging from farming to circus to community organizing. During the growing season much of their free time goes to a collaborative vegetable and herb garden that supports a local apothecary collective providing free herbal medicine to frontline struggles. Land access and community building have been a focal point of Clarence’s organizing and they are excited to continue working toward collective land stewardship alongside others at Cooperation Vermont Community Land Trust

Grace Gershuny (she/her) is widely known as an author, educator and organic consultant. In the 1990's she served on the staff of USDA’s National Organic Program, where she helped write the regulations. She learned much of what she knows through her longtime involvement with the grassroots organic movement, where she organized conferences and educational events and developed an early organic certification program for the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA)..

Grace currently serves on the Board of the Vermont Healthy Soils Coalition and the faculty of the Institute for Social Ecology, where she co-teaches an on-line course on Food and Climate Justice. Her most recent book is Organic Revolutionary: A Memoir of the Movement for Real Food, Planetary Healing, and Human Liberation (2020, Black Rose Books). She lives with her partner on a ten-acre homestead in Barnet, VT which she looks forward to sharing with a new generation of land stewards.

Kali Akuno (he/him) is the co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson, and served as the Director of Special Projects in the administration of Mayor Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus was supporting cooperative development, introducing eco-friendly and carbon reduction operations, and promoting human rights and international relations for the city. Kali also served as the Co-Director of the US Human Rights Network and the Executive Director of the Peoples’ Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) after Hurricane Katrina.

Meghan Wayland (she/they) is a Lead Organizer and Staff Director at Northeast Kingdom Organizing (NEKO), a coalition of individuals, families, faith and community-based organizations that come together to organize and advocate for economic, social, and environmental justice for the people and the places of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. Since 2007, Meghan has worked in food and agriculture, movement building, and art, and they arrived at organizing after stints as a journalist, farmer, cook, and carpenter. They are passionate about storytelling, Land Back, and bass fishing. Meghan has been involved in coordinating mutual aid flood recovery efforts in the Northeast Kingdom.

Michelle (she/her) is a mother of two and has been active in climate, social, and racial justice movements for the last twenty years. She was active in long-term mutual aid work in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, where she became committed to transformative change. She currently serves as the General Manager of the worker-owned Marshfield Village Store in rural Vermont, a member of the Board of Directors of Cooperation Vermont and the Cooperation Vermont Land Community Land Trust, a coordinator of Regeneration Corp, a Trustee of the Jaquith Library, and a member of the Planning Commission for Marshfield, VT. In addition to a decade being an executive in global education travel, previous experience includes working with the East Bay Community Law Center, Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation, Women’s Intercultural Network, and the Children’s Health Fund at Tulane School of Medicine. When she has a spare moment she enjoys fly fishing, kayaking and traveling.