Elevating Voices: Mandy

Sometimes the path into community begins with a question. Sometimes it begins with research. And sometimes, if you follow that question far enough, it leads you somewhere you did not expect to stay.

For Mandy, that path led her to The Nashville Food Project.

Mandy first came into relationship with The Nashville Food Project through her PhD fieldwork at Vanderbilt University, where she studies immigration, racialization, and community resistance in Nashville. As she followed those threads, they began to converge.

“All paths quickly took me towards The Nashville Food Project,” she shared.

What began as research became relationship. She started working alongside the Grow Team and farmers at Growing Together Farm and has remained rooted in that work ever since.

Mandy’s research is grounded in the spaces where food is grown and shared. Her work, conducted in partnership with The Nashville Food Project, centers on the lived experiences of farmers and the ways community takes shape through shared land and labor. She studies not only what is grown, but what is made possible through growing.

Across community gardens and farms, people from many different backgrounds come together, bringing knowledge, memory, and tradition with them. In these shared spaces, something shifts. Farmers are not only cultivating food. They are actively remaking their worlds. Their work reflects the layered histories of Nashville’s land and the possibilities of what it can become.

Ask Mandy about food, and she will likely bring up kohlrabi. It has become emblematic of many things in her work, from community ties through root vegetables to transnational growing traditions and evolving foodways. Through her research, she has come to understand that food is always changing, shaped by the people who grow it and the communities that sustain it.

Stepping outside of what feels familiar opens up a fuller picture of the city. It reveals a Nashville that is not singular or fixed, but diverse, dynamic, and continually emerging.

“Food is dignity,” Mandy says.

Her path into food justice began in schools, working with Latinx students and supporting food pantries. There, she encountered a reality that reshaped her understanding of food insecurity. It was not only about access to calories. It was about access to foods that nourish in every sense, including culture, identity, and belonging.

She remembers sorting through pantry items and discarding expired food that did not always reflect what people wanted or needed. In those moments, it became clear that nourishment is about more than availability. It is about dignity.

At the heart of Mandy’s work is a belief that feels both grounded and hopeful. Communities know how to feed themselves. The challenge is access.

Access to land.
Access to resources.
Access to culturally affirming foods.

This is where the work of growing, cooking, and sharing food becomes something more. It becomes about transformation and about building food futures shaped by the people most connected to them.

At The Nashville Food Project, we see this every day in the gardens and growing spaces where knowledge is shared across languages, generations, and experiences.

Last season at the Growing Together Farmers’ Market, Mandy spent time encouraging kids to carve kohlrabi instead of pumpkins. It was a small moment, but it carried something meaningful. An invitation to try something new and to see differently.

Mandy’s story reminds us that food is never just about what is on the plate. It is about who has access, whose knowledge is valued, and whose traditions are sustained.

When communities have what they need, they do not just grow food. They grow connection, resilience, and possibility.

And in that, we begin to see what a more just and nourishing food system can look like.

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Get involved:

Volunteer | Give Food | Donate

Elevating Voices: Brennan

Sometimes the path into community begins with a simple question: where can I show up?

For Brennan, that question led him to The Nashville Food Project. He was looking for something real. Something grounded. Something that mattered. And what he found was a garden.

Brennan came to this work with a belief that feels both simple and urgent: there is enough food, and everyone should have their share. That conviction led him to volunteer at the Community Farm at Mill Ridge, where he stepped into the work outdoors, in the dirt, among the growing things.

Looking back, that choice also brought him closer to memory. His mother loved gardening. Not always the work of it, but the knowing of it. The life within it. In some way, returning to the garden became a quiet way of returning to her.

At The Nashville Food Project, Brennan supports garden construction and planning, helping shape the spaces where food can grow. It is work that often happens behind the scenes, but makes everything else possible. Beds that hold seeds. Structures that support growth. Spaces that make gathering possible. Not everything happens at the table. Some of it happens before the table even exists.

Food has long been part of Brennan’s story. From watching cooking shows as a kid to working in food service to help pay for college, he learned early that food is more than sustenance. It is a way of showing up. “If I did the cooking, I could help carry the load at home,” he shared. Along the way, he noticed something simple but lasting: people want to share what they know. Recipes, techniques, stories. Food becomes a language we can all speak.

“Sharing a recipe or the experience of dining together creates a bond.”

In a world that often emphasizes difference, food reveals common ground. We gather, we eat, we share, and in those moments, connection takes root.

Each Christmas, Brennan and his family begin curing a country ham, a tradition passed down from his mother-in-law. What starts in winter is shared in summer. “It means a lot to her,” he says. “It’s a unique experience for me.” In this way, food becomes more than a meal. It becomes memory, relationship, and care carried forward.

Brennan puts it simply: food is even better when it’s shared.

That belief sits at the heart of our work. Our goal is not just to grow food or cook it, but to create the conditions where sharing is possible, where community can take shape.

There are many ways into this work. In the garden. In the kitchen. In the spaces that support both. All of it matters.

Because what we are building is not just a food system. It is a community shaped by care. And there is always room for one more at the table.

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Get involved:

Volunteer | Give Food | Donate

Elevating Voices: Barb Hoffmann & Mary Dionne

March is National Nutrition Month, a time to reflect on the power of food to strengthen both health and community. At The Nashville Food Project, that power often shows up in simple, steady ways. In the hands that chop vegetables. In the meals shared across the city. And in the friendships that grow around a prep table.

Barb Hoffmann and Mary Dionne first met at The Nashville Food Project not long after volunteers returned to the kitchen following the COVID lockdown.

Barb was helping with prep. Mary was cooking. Somewhere between chopping vegetables and passing pans across the counter, they found themselves drawn into easy conversation and shared laughter. What began as small talk at a prep table quickly grew into something deeper.

Their friendship was sealed on an ordinary afternoon when Barb drove Mary D to an eye appointment. Outside the rhythm of the kitchen, they realized just how much they had in common. Kindred spirits, it turned out, are not always found through grand moments. Sometimes they meet over a cutting board.

Soon after, an opening appeared on Mary D’s cook team. She knew immediately who belonged there.

Since then, Barb and Mary D have spent Wednesday mornings side by side in the kitchen. Cooking, prepping, and bringing a little extra joy to the work of preparing meals for the community.

Salads have become their shared canvas. Mary D delights in creating dressings from whatever fresh ingredients she finds in the cooler. Barb prefers the quiet reliability of a recipe, happily chopping, dicing, and keeping their station moving while Mary experiments with flavor.

Together, their rhythm has been simple and steady. One experimenting. One anchoring. Both caring deeply about the meals that leave the kitchen.

Though Barb has recently moved away, her presence continues to echo through the space she helped shape. In every bowl of greens tossed with care, in every moment of laughter shared across a prep table, the impact of that friendship remains.

Barb and Mary D remind us that nutrition is not only about what we eat. It is also about the community that prepares it, the care that goes into each meal, and the relationships that grow along the way.

Thank you, Barb and Mary D.

Elevating Voices: Bridget Bryant

Bridget Bryant’s connection to The Nashville Food Project began at her son’s school.

The Nashville Food Project was there, inviting families to sign up for garden plots. Bridget added her name to the list. What began as a simple step into a shared garden space became something much deeper.

That relationship grew into a partnership. And that partnership helped her expand her work as a farmer.

For Bridget, growing food is not just a business. It is alignment. It is calling. It is the work she was meant to do.

Through farming, she has been able to grow and share produce in ways that connect her more deeply to community. Food has opened doors. It has introduced her to people she might never have met otherwise. It has created opportunities to teach others about the importance of caring for the Earth with intention and respect.

Working with the soil, tending crops, harvesting what has been nurtured over time, she sees clearly that food is a bridge. It bonds people across difference. Regardless of background, belief, or circumstance, everyone shares one thing in common: we all eat.

That shared need creates shared ground.

Bridget carries her family with her in this work. Her grandparents, Ollie Hardaway, Mary Hardaway, Early and Frankie Bryant. Her parents, Eddie and Glenda Bryant. Her best friend, Lisa Hinton. Her brother, Edward Bryant. Their legacy of resilience and care lives in the way she shows up to her farm and her community.

She believes in representing herself fully through her work. The way she grows. The way she shares. The way she teaches. It is all an extension of who she is.

For Bridget, working with the Earth is not simply an occupation. It is vocation.

And through that calling, she is helping cultivate a community where food connects us, grounds us, and reminds us that we belong to one another.

Elevating Voices: Bianca Morton

Almost eight years ago, Bianca Morton was searching for work that felt purposeful.

As a chef, she had always loved food. But love alone was not enough. She was looking for mission. For meaning. For a place where food could be more than craft.

At The Nashville Food Project, she found it.

Food, for Bianca, has always been a connector. A way to show care. A way to build community. A way to express love when words fall short. Her life has been shaped by faith, purpose, and a deep belief that what we make with our hands can change what happens in the world.

She often speaks of “each one, teach one.” It is not simply a phrase. It is a way of living.

As a young person, Bianca was not exposed to the kinds of dishes she now curates and stewards. But she was formed by something more foundational: the act of breaking bread. Around her family’s table, she learned that food was not performance. It was presence. It was culture made visible. It was love made tangible.

Through her work, Bianca has built relationships with a network of neighbors she never imagined possible. She has supported individuals navigating barriers and helped create pathways into culinary skills through internships, volunteer experiences, food demonstrations, and hands-on training. Representation matters, she says. And in the kitchen, that representation becomes empowerment.

Food is not only nourishment. It is access. It is skill-building. It is dignity.

Bianca also shares openly about her own journey. Diagnosed with clinical depression in high school, she turned to food as a way to manage her emotions. At the time, she did not yet understand what that instinct meant. Now she sees it clearly. Food was not simply escape. It was medicine. It was a catalyst for healing and a pathway toward a healthier life.

That understanding shapes how she leads today.

Whether stewarding large-scale meal production or mentoring someone in their first culinary experience, Bianca approaches the kitchen as a space of care. A space where skill and compassion meet. A space where legacy is formed.

She speaks often of her grandfather. Of yeast rolls rising in the kitchen. Of recipes passed down not only as ingredients and measurements, but as memory and mission. She sees echoes of that same spirit in the founding vision of Tallu Schuyler Quinn: that food, shared with intention, can knit a community together.

For Bianca, this work is about the legacy of tomorrow.

It is about ensuring that the next generation experiences not only access to good food, but the power that comes from learning to prepare it, share it, and steward it well. It is about cultivating kitchens that do more than produce meals. They produce confidence. Connection. Care.

In every tray prepared, every intern mentored, every volunteer guided, Bianca is doing what she has always done.

She is breaking bread.

And in doing so, she is building a community where food is not simply eaten. It is shared as an expression of hope.