Calendar of Events

No Convo lunch! But please attend Empty Bowl! 

LaDonna Redmond is the founder and principal of her own consulting practice, where she supports cooperatives, nonprofit organizations, and mission-driven businesses in building more equitable, accountable, and community-centered institutions. She works with cooperative boards, leaders, and stores on governance, intercultural development, organizational culture, equity strategy, community engagement, and the relationship between cooperative values and daily practice. She is also an Intercultural Organizational Development Consultant and Coach with Columinate and a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI).

Redmond is a longtime community activist, food justice leader, cooperative organizer, public speaker, and historian whose work connects food access, racial justice, public health, cooperative economics, and democracy. Long before “urban agriculture,” “food deserts,” and “food justice” became mainstream public language, Redmond was converting vacant lots on Chicago’s West Side into urban farm sites, organizing community-based food access projects, and building models for neighborhood food sovereignty.

She is the former Diversity and Community Engagement Manager for Seward Co-op in Minneapolis, where she led diversity and engagement initiatives designed to strengthen organizational culture, marketplace competitiveness, and social responsibility. Her work helped support the successful opening of Seward Co-op’s Friendship Store, a multi-million-dollar cooperative grocery store in a historically Black Minneapolis neighborhood. The Friendship Store became an important example of how cooperative enterprise, community engagement, and racial equity can work together to expand food access and build community wealth.

Her cooperative leadership includes serving as Vice President of the Seward Community Co-op Board, President of the National Black Cooperative Association, Secretary of the National Cooperative Business Association, and a board member of the Minneapolis Urban League. Through this work, she helps advance democratic ownership, cooperative governance, racial equity, and community-rooted economic development.

Throughout her career, Redmond has worked on public health issues including substance abuse, violence prevention, and food justice. She successfully advocated for Chicago Public Schools to eliminate junk food, launched urban agriculture projects, helped start a community grocery store, co-founded the Chicago Food Systems Collaborative, founded the Campaign for Food Justice Now, and worked on federal farm policy to expand access to healthy food in communities of color.

Redmond was a 2003–2005 Food and Society Policy Fellow and a 2007 Green For All Fellow. In 2009, she was named one of TIME magazine’s Responsibility Pioneers. She has also been recognized by Food Tank as a Food Hero and has spoken nationally on food justice, sustainability, race, and democracy, including at TEDxManhattan, Bioneers, and public programs connected to King Corn. Her work and analysis have been featured in, cited by, or covered by major media outlets and public platforms including The Washington Post, PBS/Chicago Tonight, The Nation, TIME, Food Tank, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, and Essence magazine.

Redmond has lectured and presented at colleges and universities across the country, including Harvard Law School, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, the University of Minnesota, the University of California, Davis, Tuskegee University, Spelman College, the University of Utah, Oregon State University, and Portland State University.

Her TEDx talk, “Food + Justice = Democracy,” continues to be widely used as a framework for understanding the relationship between food systems, equity, and democratic life.

She holds a master’s degree in Cooperative Management from Saint Mary’s University and is currently pursuing graduate study in history at Harvard University, with a focus on Black women’s resistance, historical memory, cooperative economics, and public scholarship.

Food + Justice = Democracy: The Table, the Ballot, and the Future asks what it means to build a democracy where everyone can eat, belong, and shape the conditions of their lives. In this 25-minute Convocation talk, I connect food access to civic participation, racial justice, cooperative economics, and community power. The talk offers both a warning and a vision: democracy cannot survive on an empty stomach, and the future depends on what we are willing to build together.

Please register in advance if you would like to attend via Zoom. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

from Convocations