Our Board
Nicola Williams, Founder and President
Nicola Williams, is the President of Sustainable Food and Culture, a 501(c)3 nonprofit located at 17 Story Street location. Nicola Williams has lived in Cambridge for 34 years and is a cultural strategist, arts advocate, environmentalist, and business mentor. Nicola has over 20 years of experience in cultural strategy, marketing strategy, grassroots marketing, public relations, community outreach, organizing event planning, and production. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicola, a passionate gardener launched the Let’s Grow Something Together initiative, a Cambridge/Somerville project to encourage hundreds of neighbors to plant a sunflower sow sunflower and sow seeds of love and healing for our community in a time of great angst and racial unrest nationally.
When cultural activist and Sustainable Food and Culture (SFAC) Founder Nicola Williams moved her offices to Story Street in 2022, she became intrigued with Harriet Jacobs. SFAC projects have included organizing the Harriet Jacobs Legacy Committee to conduct research about Harriet Jacobs’s time in Cambridge. With help from Harvard’s Phillips Brooks House student volunteers, installed a garden to beautify the grounds surrounding Jacobs’s historical marker on site.
Nicola also owns a social enterprise, The Williams Agency, a marketing and business consulting firm with close to 30 years’ experience in grassroots, economic development, and mission-driven work. Nicola’s business is built upon the values she cares deeply about: sustainable food, diversity, localism, and respect for the environment. Nicola has organized some of Boston’s premier sustainable food and cultural events, including the Boston Local Food Festival and Boston JerkFest. These cultural assets have ranked among Boston’s top 10 food events by Zagat. She is also the Facilitator of the Cambridge-Somerville Black Business Network (CSBBN), a project of Sustainable Business Network in collaboration with Cambridge Local First, of which she serves on the board of directors and advisory committee respectively. Nicola led in the development of CSBBN’s Equity Fund and raised $1.1MM to date in launching the fund.
Karen A. Spiller, Founder and Clerk
Karen A. Spiller, with over twenty years of experience, is the Principal of KAS Consulting based in Boston Massachusetts. With a focus on racial equity and intersectionality, Karen works with local, state, regional and national organizations committed to creating equitable public health and sustainable food systems.
Involved in state-wide and regional food system work, Karen is a backbone and a steering committee member of and serves as Massachusetts and coordinating Ambassador for Food Solutions New England (FSNE), a six-state multicultural, multigenerational network focused on food system transformation with racial equity at its core. Celebrating its 10th year of national and international participation during the month of April, Karen co-leads the FSNE’s 21 -Day Habit Building Challenge designed to “build skill and will” and action to address racial inequities, through a food system lens.
Along with being a board member of Boston Food Forest Coalition, Karen serves as a land steward and leader of the Old West Church Food Forest in downtown Boston. She also is a board member of Sustainable Business Network of Massachusetts, Northeast Organic Farming Association – Massachusetts (NOFA/Mass) and American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA). Karen is a founding member of Southern New England Farmers of Color Collaborative (SNEFCC). Among national contributions in food justice, she contributes to the National Right to Food Community of Practice as a coordinating team member.
As the Thomas W. Haas Professor in Sustainable Food Systems at University of New Hampshire, Durham, Karen is engaged in scholarship on the intersection of networks and racial equity across the campus and its surrounding community, extending to higher education partners nationally and internationally.