Nia Kiara Cole is a Black, non-binary, fifth-generation farmer from Stone Mountain, GA. They earned a B.A. in Film from Howard University and pursued a Master’s of Social Work (also at Howard) and a Master’s of Interaction Design (at George Washington University); establishing a career documenting and innovating solutions for social, environmental, and food justice movements and organizations. They transitioned to farming full-time in 2021, to prepare to inherit their family homestead in High Point/Jamestown, North Carolina; land their folks have stewarded as both slaves and then as free people since the early 1800s. They spent the next couple years learning and working with Black farms, farmers, and elders across the DMV — including Dreaming Out Loud, Common Good City Farm, Farmer Gale of Deep Roots Farm, Gail and D’Real of Three Part Harmony Farm and Spice Creek Farm, and Blain and Samaria of Juniper’s Garden and Earthbound Building. Then in 2023, Nia Kiara co-founded the Kinfolk Land Collective in Madison, GA—a Black, LGBTQ+-led collective and 10-acre vegetable production farm, that set to reimagine and strengthen the relationship between communities of color and the land. And finally in April of 2025, they launched and established Kin & Flo Farm on their ancestral land; beginning the transition of acreage that’s been fallow for over 20 years, into a training and incubation space that will partner with local Black farmers and Black institutions to provide labor development and food to the community. They serve on several boards, and are a member of several agricultural organizations dedicated to the advancement and preservation of Black agrarianism and Afroecology; with a hyper focus on communities in the Southeast. And after just under a year of supporting narrative and administrative development, they now serve as Fund Manager of the Southern Black Farmers Community-Led Fund (SBFCLF); which invests in the realization of self-determining and healthy Southern Black communities in both rural and urban areas.
The fund now welcomes funding from a broad array of donors to continue to support rural Black community self determination throughout the Black Belt region.