Kolu Zigbi

Kolu Zigbi spent two decades as a Program Officer and later as Program Director at the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, where she found alignment with the foundation’s values and support for organizations led by people directly impacted by injustice.  An advocate and organizer within philanthropy, Kolu co-founded Community Food Funders, a philanthropic organizing project supporting the development of an ecologically sustainable and socially just “food shed” for New York City.  Many of the organizations she supported over the years have also been grantees of the Lawson Valentine Foundation.

In 2014 Kolu was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design where she explored equitable food-oriented development in the Southern US, and internationally. After helping the Noyes Foundation transition into a new phase of grantmaking, Kolu made her own transition into working as an independent consultant.

Kolu lives in Central Harlem with her family.   Kolu is particularly grateful for the examples set by her Liberian grandfather, who was an upland rice farmer and traditional village chief in the Upper Guinea Rainforest of Lofa County, and her Italian grandmother, who co-directed a Protestant orphanage, clinic and school in Portici, Naples.  She loves improvisational cooking, everything written by Octavia Butler, swimming in the ocean, imagining just systems, everyday acts of kindness, and mundane miracles.