In this episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford sits with Niya Brown Matthews, a self-taught, first-generation farmer and community educator. Niya reframes growing as a practice of awareness and responsibility. The garden becomes a living classroom, teaching us to observe patterns, respect timing and respond instead of control. Sustainability, she explains, is bigger than self. It is legacy, alignment, and community stewardship. When we strip away perfectionism and curated aesthetics, we are left with the essential question: why are we doing this, and can it last? Nature answers when we are present enough to listen.

Niya’s journey reflects range and resolve. She speaks of her pivot from a fast-paced corporate life in Atlanta filled with red bottoms, boardrooms and constant motion to building a farm space alongside her husband during the pandemic with the intention to heal, slow down and restore their relationship to food. That choice reshaped their health, clarified their purpose and deepened their responsibility to the community. Growing food is named for what it is: an urgent and necessary currency. One that builds resilience, restores health and strengthens community power. If we pay attention to the land, the body, and the climate, the future gives us aligned instruction.

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

Jordan King steps into Compost, Cotton & Cornrows as proof that climate science does not have to be sterile, inaccessible or stripped of culture to be credible. Jamaican-born and trained in Marine Environmental Sciences and Biology, Jordan reframes the Everglades not as a distant wetland, but as a living system under siege by climate change, unchecked development, and disrupted freshwater flow. From flocculent organic matter to the importance and impact of carbon, Jordan translates complex ecological processes into truth you can feel, making it painfully clear how one shift in the system sets off a chain reaction that touches everything downstream including us.

But this conversation is not just about science. It is about who gets to be a scientist. This 23 year old with a beautiful nature inspired grill weaves rap, fashion, art and cultural expression into research, rejecting the idea that brilliance must look buttoned-up to be valid. We talk about free graduate education, fieldwork waist-deep in Everglades water and why Gen Zers are hungry to engage with climate work when they can finally see themselves reflected in it. This episode is about advocating for ecosystems, telling the truth about climate systems and using every tool available to reach people where they are.

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

Jazmin Duke enters this conversation like a wellness renegade dismantling everything we thought we knew about our bodies, our cravings and the colonial food systems that dictate them. She traces her journey from a painful menstrual cycle to a plant-powered lifestyle rooted in ancestral science, exposing the violent parallels between animal agriculture and slavery and asking a searing question: If our ancestors turned scraps into soul food under captivity, why are we still eating what they were forced to eat - now that we have the freedom and knowledge to evolve? As a longtime vegan, Jazmin breaks down the genius of Black herbal lineage, menstrual sovereignty and the radical truth that women’s wellness is not new, it really is memory. And she does it with unapologetic cultural flair that’s reminding us that Black women have always been the blueprint, always been the botanists, and always been the ones remixing survival into brilliance.

But Jazmin doesn’t just remember, she is unapologetically building. In a landscape where the women’s wellness industry is overwhelmingly white and clinically sterile, she conjures Kitty Coo - a luxury women’s wellness brand that refuses to flatten femininity into beige minimalism. Her products feel like ancestral alchemy dipped in neon: vibrant packaging, playful design and her girly-girl aesthetic that is as scientific as it is spiritual, as joyful as it is rebellious. From okra’s hidden legacy as an ancestral aphrodisiac to the microbiome as a blueprint of liberation, Jazmin reveals how pleasure, period health and sexual literacy are political acts and why Black women cannot be erased from an industry they created. This is most certainly a cute conversation about self-care but it’s also a reclamation of knowledge, power and divine intelligence that feels like someone finally turned the lights back on.

https://kittycoowellness.com/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

Sherrell Dorsey enters this conversation with the certainty and clarity that sustainability is a return to our original intelligence and is the design lab where climate tech, capital, innovation and narrative control decide who gets to build tomorrow. In this episode she traces the ways climate action becomes transformative when rooted in storytelling, culture and technological fluency. Sherrell breaks down how fashion, beauty and wellness shaped her early understanding of systems and how those nonlinear experiences led her into the climate tech landscape. She explains that sustainability demands a deep reconnection to self and to the earth and insists that we already possess the regenerative solutions we need. The real barrier is not innovation but access and subsequently the power that money brings. Sherrell details the importance of learning how technology moves, who funds it and how narratives create entire worlds that shape our desires, economies and sense of possibility.

As the conversation unfolds Sherrell reveals the urgent need for Black communities to unapologetically show up with precision in policy rooms, funding environments and climate negotiations. She examines the emerging universe of green tech investments, the rise of climate funds and the limitations of venture capital for long term climate solutions. Sherrell offers a strategic framework for negotiating community benefit agreements, building institutional power and moving from reaction to proactive civic engagement that’s also rooted in care. She argues that AI and climate technology will determine economic mobility for the next decade and warns that the train has already left the station. This episode calls listeners to build relationships, become fluent in the language of power and step into rooms that were not designed with us in mind. It is a masterclass in understanding sustainability as an ecosystem of storytelling, infrastructure and political strategy.

https://www.sherrelldorsey.com/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

Twenty years after Hurricane Katrina, the storm still rages in our collective memory, not just as a natural disaster, but as a state-sanctioned genocide against Black communities in New Orleans. In this powerful conversation, Dominique Drakeford sits down with DAWN RICHARD who is an eclectic singer/songwriter, culture bearer and New Orleans native, to unravel the deeper truths of what Katrina exposed: environmental racism, modern colonization and the ongoing erasure of ancestral knowledge.

Together, they discuss how sustainability is an inheritance carried through stories and rituals. It is community survival. From Cancer Alley to cultural preservation, from youth activism to intergenerational power, this episode refuses the sanitized narratives of climate disaster and demands that we center Black voices and the authentic lived experiences in the fight for environmental justice.

This is more than remembrance. It’s a call to action. A reminder that the stripping away of our stories is the stripping away of our power. And a declaration that sustainability, at its root, has always been ours.

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

In this vivid and electric episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford is joined by the incomparable Maya Penn — youth climate solutionist, award-winning animator, founder, and unapologetic disruptor shifting culture through creativity and care.

Maya opens up about the realities and responsibilities of being a youth activist at the forefront of climate justice — carving space in a movement that often tokenizes youth while demanding labor without systemic support. With nearly two decades of experience (yes, starting at age 8), Maya reflects on how her early curiosity became a catalyst for global advocacy — and why today’s youth activism must go beyond awareness to radically rebuild systems from the root.

They dive deep into the need to center climate justice — not as a trend, but as the core framework for collective liberation — reminding us that climate is not a siloed issue, it’s the multiplying force behind everything we care about.

Maya also shares her passion for animation as activism, lifting the veil on her groundbreaking film ASALI: Power of the Pollinators — a visually lush, emotionally charged environmental short she wrote, directed, and animated, featuring a powerhouse cast (Whoopi Goldberg, Viola Davis, and more). Through Upendo Productions, Maya is proving that art, especially from the margins, can shift the world.

Tune in for a journey into:
🌀 The growing pains and power of Gen Z climate leadership
🌺 ASALI: Power of the Pollinators and animation as climate education
🛑 How environmental injustice shows up community and conversation
📣 Why we must center climate justice — not just “climate change”
🖤 Storytelling, cultural preservation, and the spiritual nature of sustainability

This episode is a love letter to young visionaries — and a reminder that the revolution will be illustrated.

https://mayasideas.com/

https://www.asali.movie/

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

What happens when you infuse radical transparency, ancestral ingredients, and community-rooted ethics into the beauty game? You get HanaHana Beauty—and a founder like Abena Boamah-Acheampong who's shaking the table with intention. In this dynamic episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford dives deep with Abena to explore the spiritual, political, and deeply personal layers of building a brand that refuses to compromise.

From sourcing shea butter directly from cooperatives in Ghana and paying double the asking price, to redefining what it means to sustain—not just the earth, but the people behind the product—Abena doesn’t just talk the talk, she walks it with grace and grit. This isn’t your average clean beauty convo. It’s a powerful meditation on ethical sourcing, supply chain storytelling, and dismantling beauty industry norms with the audacity to be real.

They unpack:
✨ The sacred power of simplicity in Black body care
✨ Why marketing must reflect the diversity of Blackness
✨ The tension between financial growth and founder sustainability
✨ Healing through community, faith, and the beauty rituals of our elders
✨ Unlearning overconsumption and resisting the Amazonification of our needs

If you’ve ever felt the pull to align your beauty practice with your values—or you’re a founder striving to do business differently—this episode is your balm and your blueprint.

hanahanabeauty.com

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows

What does it take to plant new roots on foreign soil—literally? In this global episode of Compost, Cotton & Cornrows, Dominique Drakeford speaks with Franklyn Hutchinson, a Trinidadian grape farmer living in Yamanashi, Japan. Without formal training, Franklyn carved his way into one of the world’s most meticulous agricultural markets—learning from local elders, YouTube, and an unwavering commitment to self-sufficiency.

Together, they explore the science, sweat, and spirit behind Japanese grape cultivation, the myth that growing food is only for the poor, and how small-scale community gardening can spark major shifts in food justice. Franklyn reminds us that sustainability isn’t just about solar panels and policy—it’s about how we manage what we already have. Soil. Skill. Space. Intention.

From makeshift trellises to dreams of bringing high-quality grapes back to Trinidad, this episode is a testament to ancestral grit, diasporic determination, and the power of growing for yourself, your people, and your future.

Tap in if you're ready to:

• Rethink sustainability beyond trend
• Get inspired to grow your own food (yes, even in a container!)
• Hear a rare story of Caribbean diasporic farming in East Asia
• Honor farming as both science and sacred art

Key gems from Franklyn:

“It’s not good to turn down an opportunity to learn something. It could help you later in life.”
“Some people think only poor people grow food. But that thinking is why food so damn expensive.”
“Even if it’s just 1% of what you eat—grow something. That’s sustainability.”

@rosy_grapes-yamanashi

Compost, Cotton & Cornrows: the space where Black & Afro-Indigenous Vanguards are redefining sustainability through storytelling!

@Compost_Cotton_Cornrows