Our Team

Christopher Bradshaw, Executive Director

Christopher first felt the passion for social change as a third-grader when a teacher-issued ban on tag sparked him to organize with classmates to sign petitions, stage a sit-in on the sandbox and boycott recess for their right to play!

He honed his organizing and entrepreneurial skills at Howard University studying political science and business while developing a human rights centered worldview as an avid member of Amnesty International.

He now applies that same innate passion and acquired skills as a social entrepreneur at Dreaming Out Loud – the organization he founded and serves as Executive Director. Since founding the organization he continues to advance as a leader and social entrepreneur through experiences such as the StartingBloc Fellowship (NY’11) and the everyday journey of changemaker.

Darryl Perkins, Strategic Partnerships and Community Engagement

Darryl Perkins became keenly interested in food systems and increasing access to healthy, locally grown foods while doing work as a lead coordinator for a national campaign that sought to fight poverty and pollution by increasing awareness and participation among low income urban communities. While doing this work he became interested in urban agriculture and believes that we can use agriculture as an entry point to helping heal impacted communities and grow healthy, vibrant, ones.

In 2012, for 6 months,  Darryl had the opportunity to travel and work in Brazil on a farm and retreat center outside of Rio de Janeiro. While in Brazil he learned about different farming techniques (he became particularly interested in agroforestry and vertical farming) and helped develop programs to engage the local communities in the agricultural process.
Darryl is from Oakland, CA and came to the East Coast in 2003 to attend Howard University, where he graduated with a degree in Anthropology.
His parents are avid gardeners and as a child his chores were centered around helping in the yard (despite his protests).

Andrea Anderson, Market Manager, Aya Community Markets 

DoL bioThough Drea jokes about emerging from the womb with hoe in hand, a childhood spent in the family’s 2 acre garden and seasonal meat processing operation in Wisconsin doesn’t speak much to the contrary. A life-long lover of growing, Drea approaches food systems work from a standpoint of necessity (homesteading wasn’t always a suburban cliche) as well as a belief in meeting people/communities where they are and acknowledging that the real barrier to food security isn’t an absence of food production knowledge.

Drea has spent the past 5 years managing organic vegetable, rotational grazing, grass based dairy, pastured pork and free range poultry operations in the suburban Baltimore and DC area and lived to tell the tale (and it’s a good one). Drea’s a general fan of quick-wit, bad jokes, puns, awkward social interactions, stories of adventure and all things farming- so don’t be shy.

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