Celebrating Tiffany Brewer’s Impact at EarthDance
EarthDance Interim Co-Executive Director & Director of Impact Tiffany Brewer is a connector of passions, people, and food at this teaching farm. She has been a learner and guide in justice and equity work since she came to the farm more than eleven years ago.
As the first person of color in executive leadership at EarthDance, Tiffany’s steady presence has profoundly shaped EarthDance and the work of the teaching farm each day. Her journey with EarthDance began as a farming apprentice in 2014, and this year, we’re celebrating her sixth anniversary as a full-time member of the team. Even after moving to Texas with her family last year, Tiffany’s rooted connection to the soil, plants, and people of EarthDance, as well as to the work here, continues to benefit every person involved with the farm.
How did Tiffany find her way to the farm? Unexpectedly. Having majored in business and accounting in college, she simultaneously worked as a schoolteacher, coach, part-time casino table games dealer, and semi-pro basketball player after college. She also earned her real estate license, invested in real estate and became a landlord. “I was a hustler in my 20s,” Tiffany said, working 6-7 days per week for about five years. But in 2011, when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, Tiffany began to think more critically about her own well-being and how people treat our bodies. This reflection led her to realize in 2012, “I am doing too much; I need to slow down and prioritize my health.” She had always been a person who loved the outdoors and enjoyed the beauty of nature. In the spring of 2014, she married her husband, William, and they supported each other in making changes to their work and eating habits. She realized she needed to know how to grow her own food and soon after, found EarthDance’s Apprenticeship program. As an Apprentice, she embarked on a passionate path for herself, connected with the soil and the people. She also learned she was pregnant, and did the whole apprenticeship while growing a human! Little did she know that her search for personal healing would lead her to help hundreds of others find connection and a path toward improved wellness in community with the land.
After completing the apprenticeship in 2014, she stayed connected to the farm as a seasonal Junior Farm Crew leader, eventually becoming the full-time Program Manager in 2019. This role required her to lean into and hone several of her passions: business, mentorship, education, and agriculture. “I think I am naturally good at teaching people things,” Tiffany said. “It’s something I love to do, and I think what I excel at is sometimes very hard for today’s teachers to learn—classroom management and relating to students in a way that empowers them and makes them want to learn more.” Tiffany carried this into her work as Program Manager, then Program Director, then as Managing Director, and now as Interim Co-Executive Director & Director of Impact at EarthDance.
In Tiffany’s experience, healing is about connecting and reconnecting. She commits daily to investing in showing up in the work with curiosity and courage. For Tiffany, the work she does at EarthDance is deeply rooted in her family history and her connection to the land. Her great grandfather, William Monger, a farmer and sharecropper, fled Mississippi with his family to St. Louis under threat of White supremacist violence for simply being a Black man riding a white horse, which Tiffany shared with our team as part of a JEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) staff meeting several years ago. And, in Tiffany’s family, as with many Black American families, there have been generations since where connection with the land has become increasingly remote. Racism continues to cause harm, small and large, deep and wide. One example is that, because of systemic racism, Black Americans face food insecurity at a much higher rate than their White neighbors.
In connection with EarthDance, Tiffany has found her way back to the land and to honoring her ancestors in the slow, deep work of dismantling White supremacy through steady connection. Her work at EarthDance has always been about connecting people—to the land, to each other, and to meaningful, hands-on educational programs.
When the pandemic hit not long after she started full-time, Tiffany was rooted in her work and her personal journey, helping EarthDance navigate exceptionally challenging times fostering meaningful connection, healing, and growth among the staff. It was at this time that the team, together, began the process of making much needed changes to the educational programs offered at the farm school.
“We really started diving into the JEDI work and how we can not only do that internally but also with our public-facing programs,” Tiffany explained. JEDI became a steady focus. “We acknowledge that we all have unlearning to do, and as we continue to unlearn White supremacy and learn the JEDI principles that now deeply influence how EarthDance operates, we are more reflective before making next steps and moving forward. I think that having that time of reflection – especially in 2020 – brought to light ways that the organization reinforced, rather than dismantled inequities and stereotypes. We recognized there needed to be restoration. I think we are much more conscious now of operating in ways that could potentially do harm so that we don’t make those same mistakes again.
“And mistakes do still happen, but we seek repair when they do with a greater collective consciousness. There are differences now in how we go about acknowledging and making steps for repair. In the past there would be defensiveness, and an unwillingness to acknowledge privilege. We can now name when we see or are showing characteristics of White supremacy – now we are listening and acknowledging it so we can repair and restore,” Tiffany said.
“Tiffany has been such a proponent of the JEDI process at EarthDance, role-modeling a willingness to grow and to say uncomfortable things when she feels she has an important truth to share,” said Development Director Rachel Levi. “She also demonstrates a planful approach that enables her to radiate calm, rather than urgency, which is inspiring.”
“I think it’s also very important to acknowledge the value in diversity,” Tiffany shared. “Personally, I think that everyone I work with also sees the value in diversity. This did not happen overnight. We commit to this, and we’ve integrated it into our staff meetings and daily work, and we’re also holding ourselves accountable. We realized that it was crucial to us to be more focused on improving the conditions of our local community.” For the last several years, EarthDance has consistently revisited its values, and has steadily been weaving these principles into every aspect of its operations.
Tiffany played a pivotal role in helping to revise EarthDance’s Apprenticeship program to be more inclusive and equitable when participants and the farmer educators brought concerns to the team and the board in 2019. “For 12 seasons, we’d been hosting apprentices on the farm in a tuition-based program that was months-long and wasn’t really reaching people where they were, especially now. For aspiring farmers in the apprenticeship, we decided that we needed to be paying people to participate as laborers as they learned to farm with us.” Tiffany helped secure funding for the Apprenticeship through Americorps, and the program was revised to be a 10-week, paid apprenticeship during the busiest part of the season. Since then, the apprenticeship has evolved. Now, with fewer participants, but deeper work and pay that is considered a living wage, the apprenticeship is a version of itself that EarthDance hopes to continue to be able to support and grow.
And, Spring Training for Gardeners, a hybrid online and in-person class launched in 2021, grew out of the explosion of pandemic gardens and this realization that EarthDance could provide a tailored education program for beginning gardeners. The team, together, made Spring Training available on a sliding scale or free to local residents.
Pay What You Can is now an option for all educational programs (except the apprenticeship, which is paid) and produce. Tiffany’s role was crucial in bringing the Pay What You Can Farm Stand to life, too. She’s helped hundreds of program participants and many members of the EarthDance staff connect more deeply with the land, and with growing food, farmers, and community in ways that embody the JEDI values the team has, together, worked to sow and nurture.
“I see her as a really accomplished big sister,” Erin Renee Roberts, a 2020 Apprenticeship alum shared. “She’s a guiding light of sorts for a lot of people.”
The JEDI work at EarthDance is ongoing. Tiffany’s leadership has been instrumental in fostering a culture of reflection and accountability, helping the team to unlearn harmful practices and commit to building an organization that values food justice and true community, along with the healing necessary to bring these values to life.