Krysten Aguilar spent nine years at La Semilla Food Center in Anthony, NM, the last four as Co-Executive Director, before coming onboard at the Castanea Fellowship in 2021. Krysten played a pivotal role in directing La Semilla to focus on intersectional work to address systemic issues facing communities in southern New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. In addition to focusing on redirecting wealth to communities whose land and labor has been stolen from for generations, Krysten’s work at La Semilla also focused internally on the organization and the non-profit field in general, working to decolonize the nonprofit industrial mindset and pushing funders & philanthropy to hand over decision making processes to community-led endeavors to disrupt the hoarding of stolen wealth. Her work centers justice, power building, anti-racism, and shared leadership, using food systems and leadership development as a tool to cultivate and support movement and power building in BIPOC communities.

Krysten has a background in Biology, Anthropology, and food studies. She lives in the northern reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert in Las Cruces, NM, with her family. She loves cooking vegan food (even though she’s not vegan), riding bikes, hiking in desert mountains, being aspirational, and doing yoga far too infrequently.