From Seed to Thread 🌱🧵 Reimagining Regenerative Food & Fiber Systems
​What would it take to build food and fiber systems that regenerate land, strengthen communities, and honor the knowledge that has sustained them for generations?
​During New York Climate Week, From Soil To Soul, DNA Sustainable Threds, and the NYU Wagner Food Policy Alliance (WFPA) are coming together to host an intimate evening exploring the interconnected future of our food and fiber systems.
​Through film, storytelling, Indigenous knowledge, and cross-disciplinary conversation, we’ll journey from seed and soil to food and fiber—exploring Native food sovereignty and seed rematriation, regenerative food systems, urban agriculture, circular fashion, climate resilience, and community.
​The evening will bring together perspectives from Angela Ferguson (Onondaga Nation, Eel Clan), Clementina MartĂnez-Masarweh of DNA Sustainable Threds, Melissa Metrick of the NYU Urban Farm Lab, and Ankur Shah of From Soil To Soul, followed by an interactive conversation and Q&A with NYU students and faculty.
​More than a panel, From Seed to Thread is an invitation to listen, reflect, connect across disciplines, and consider:
​What role can each of us play in the systems we want to grow?
​Food and refreshments will be provided, with time at the end of the evening to continue the conversation and connect with speakers, students, and faculty.
​🌱 What to Expect
​🎬 Film & Storytelling — From Soil To Soul: Food Justice in L.A. screening + Cyborg Human: The Future We Choose™ trailer
🌽 Native Food Sovereignty & Seed Rematriation
🌿 Regenerative Food Systems & Urban Agriculture
🧵 Circular Fashion, Fiber Systems & Microplastics
🌎 Food, Fiber & Climate Resilience
đź’¬ Panel Conversation + Student & Faculty Q&A
🍲 Food, Refreshments & Community Connection
​Meet the Speakers
​🌽 Angela Ferguson | Onondaga Nation, Eel Clan
​Traditional Grower • Seed Preservationist • Food Sovereignty Practitioner & Educator • Indigenous Chef
​Angela is an Indigenous food sovereignty leader, traditional grower, educator, and seed steward based on her ancestral homelands in Central New York. As Supervisor of the Onondaga Nation Farm, Angela works to sustain and revitalize Haudenosaunee agricultural traditions, from Three Sisters cultivation and traditional foodways to seed preservation and intergenerational knowledge sharing.
​Angela is also an original founder of Braiding the Sacred, a network dedicated to Indigenous corn, community building, and the rematriation of seeds to their original homelands. She has helped steward a collection of more than 4,000 Indigenous varieties of corn, beans, and other heirloom foods, working alongside Indigenous communities across Turtle Island to protect seeds as living carriers of culture, sovereignty, and ancestral knowledge.
​She has vast experience of cooking, teaching, and presenting at food summits, colleges, organizations, and Nations throughout Turtle Island. She has also participated in several films & documentaries sharing about food sovereignty, seed journeys, and cultural traditions.
​At this gathering, Angela will share her perspective on Native food sovereignty and seed  rematriation, exploring how protecting seeds, traditional knowledge, and relationships to land can help shape more regenerative and resilient food systems.
​🧵 Clementina MartĂnez-Masarweh | DNA Sustainable Threds
​Filmmaker • Trashion Designer • Circular Fashion Advocate
​Clementina “Sustainable Latina ©” is an award-winning filmmaker, visionary, and trashion designer exposing the hidden dangers of microplastics and toxins in fashion. Through groundbreaking films, designs, and climate activism, she disrupts textile waste while amplifying environmental and Indigenous stories.
​With 20+ years in fashion, she shifted from fast fashion to sustainability. Her activism led to the passage of SB62 Bills that address garment workers rights. Now, a SF Lead for Fashion Revolution, she shares her knowledge, mentors and inspires others on Circular Fashion, along with representing the Slow Fashion Movement and ReMake Organization.
​Clementinas’ upcycled and trashion designs, along with her films have showcased at:
​Earth Day SF
​Earth Day Montanna
​Climate Week SF
​Climate Week NY
​Indigenous People’s Day
​Events & Colleges Internationally
​National and International Film Festivals
​A collaboration with award-winning Norwegian director and producer Mariel Gomsrud, Clementina’s most recent work— Cyborg Human: The Future We Choose™—focuses on nanoplastics in human embryos and brings attention to the dangers of fossil fuel fashion and the microplastics released on our planet.
​🌿 Melissa Metrick | NYU Urban Farm Lab
​Urban Farmer • Educator • NYU Urban Farm Lab Manager
​Melissa Metrick is the NYU Urban Farm Lab Manager and adjunct professor for NYU's Nutrition and Food Studies Department. She instructs the class Introduction to Urban Agriculture, a hands-on Urban Agriculture class, where students have the opportunity to partake in crop planning, harvesting, and implementing sustainable urban agriculture practices on NYU's campus farm.
​Metrick has upwards of two decades of experience in urban agriculture, from volunteering with Americorps within school gardens in South Berkeley to teaching children how to grow food at the Ruthe Howe Family Garden at the New York Botanical Gardens. Metrick also played an integral role as the garden manager at Roberta's pizza, a popular farm-to-table restaurant dishing out wood-fired pizzas in Brooklyn. There she helped design and create the on-site kitchen garden, also used to educate the chefs and guests in how to grow food sustainably within a city environment.
​Melissa received her Bachelor's degree from SUNY Purchase with a focus on Environmental Education and Fine Art. She has a Master's degree from NYU's Food Studies Department, a Horticultural Certificate from Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and is a Master Composter.
​🌎 Ankur Shah | From Soil To Soul
​Climate Scientist • Food Systems Researcher • Environmental Educator
​Ankur is a geospatial data scientist at PlanetSapling where he uses satellite data to assess various climate hazards and monitor environmental issues. He is also the Director of Operations at Mycelium, where he helped design a sustainable food system vision for 2050 for Huntsville, Alabama and installed automated raised beds in a few school gardens. He brings scientific perspectives to the project from his academic and work background in environmental science. He is studying biomimicry at Arizona State University and plans to create sustainable urban design solutions using lessons from nature.
​Having grown up in Mumbai and witnessing starvation, malnutrition and food insecurity along with severe air and water pollution first hand, Ankur is highly motivated to implement systemic solutions which foster food sovereignty for a just present and future.
​For Ankur, From Soil to Soul is a labor of love which is a personal journey to learn and highlight systemic solutions to the most pressing food-related issues and ultimately inspire all of us to enable the creation of locally adaptable, resilient, and just food systems.
​From seed to thread, what might we regenerate together? 🌱
​Come curious, bring your questions, and join us for an evening of stories, food, learning, and connection across the systems that feed and clothe us.