Whitney Jaye is a farmer, organizer, agrarian artist, memory worker, and mother whose love for the land and sea stem back deep into her life and lineage. Her roots are in Wilmington, North Carolina, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the southernmost point of the Cape Fear River, and where her family has been for nine generations. She sees her work through the lens of Black Southern lifeways that (re)center agrarianism, and through the ancestral memories and practices of coastal Carolinian culture.

Whitney Jaye’s food systems and organizing work spans farming, agricultural education, programmatic design, and organizational development and strategy. She has partnered with organizations including Greening Youth Foundation, Atlanta Botanical Garden, Morehouse School of Medicine, Ashoka Changemakers, and West Atlanta Watershed Alliance to create and implement an array of programs with a focus on environmental literacy and land-based learning. She has served on the Leadership Team of the National Black Food and Justice Alliance (NBFJA), and the Steering Committee of the Southwest Atlanta Growers Cooperative (SWAG).

Today, Whitney Jaye serves on the Board of Directors for Boggs Rural Life Center in Keysville, Georgia, is a founding member of the Black Dye Growers Cooperative, and is the farmer/owner of Sunbird Flowers, a small farm producing sustainably grown cut flowers. In 2024, she founded Calabash Arts, an educational studio that creates space for ancestral memory, practice, and embodiment of the Black agrarian way. She currently serves as Co-Executive Director of the Southeastern African American Farmers Organic Network (SAAFON), where she guides organizational development, strategy, and programming. Whitney Jaye’s membership affiliations include Alternate ROOTS, the Federation of Southern Cooperatives, and the Brown Sugar Stitchers Quilt Guild. She deeply values the brilliance, spirit, and abundance of Black Southern agrarian magic and has been a witness to its power to transform and heal.