Our Team
At Soul Soil Collective, our leadership is rooted in community, care, and collective liberation. As a Black and queer-led nonprofit, we are guided by a team of passionate organizers, land stewards, and dreamers dedicated to creating healing spaces, radical rest, and sustainable sanctuary for LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC communities.
But we don’t do this work alone—collaboration is at the heart of everything we build. Whether you're a farmer, artist, healer, educator, or someone passionate about community care, we invite you to co-create with us!
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💛 Join our team of collaborators and help us grow something beautiful. Follow the link below to get involved!
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Meet Our Land Acquisition Team & Board
Aaron Pitsenberger He/Him
SSCF & Whitelock Community Farm Board President
Land Acquisition Team
Greetings everyone,
I am currently serving as the president of the board of for the Black and trans*/NB and gender-expansive centered nonprofit organization, Soul Soil Collective Farm. In addition, I am honored to be a 2023 Brio Collective Black Sovereignty Fellow alongside Michelé Prince, participating in weekly leadership development training with fellow Black leaders and innovators from the Baltimore area.
My professional background includes developing my management skills in the service industry while also cultivating my leadership within-centered community spaces. I am eager to engage more deeply in the important work of Black liberation and healing justice. We have dedicated several years to dreaming planning this project, and we look forward to welcoming you on this journey with us.
Michelé Prince They/Them
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SSCF Board Secretary
Land Acquisition Team
Michelé Prince is a scholar, writer, choreographer, and collaborative cultural producer. They are a nonbinary hybrid of a person brought up girl and born, raised, and reppin’ Jamaica, WI and South Central LA and now live, very happily, in the DMV. They are activated by the intersections of desire, power, fluidity, and the fantastic.
Fascinated with utilizing the lens of race, class, gender, and sexuality to study power. Michelé has spent the last 12+ years studying the creation and maintenance of hierarchies, the roots of oppression, and the stifling of difference. Their research and creative interests center masculine of center cultural production, womxn of color speculative thought, movement and dance, storytelling, and mythmaking praxis. And, all things critical race.
They are interested in utilizing the gift of storytelling and the tools of mythmaking, revision, and speculation in order to visualize elsewhere(s) and practices for otherwise—especially for Black and queer people—children and adults. Dancemaking, movement direction, and collaborative art practice is a large part of their mental health regime and worldmaking process.
Michelé holds a Master’s degree from the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Women’s Studies from the University of Washington.
Dr. Kris T. Gebhard They/Them
SSCF Board Treasurer -Land Acquisition Team
Soul Soil Research Institue- Community Researcher
Soul Soil Healing -Clinical Director
Hi everyone! I’m Kris Gebhard, PhD (they/them), a gardener, poet/lyricist, percussionist, and licensed clinical psychologist. I’m a co-founding board member of Soul Soil Collective Farm, founder of the Soul Soil Research Institute, and co-founder (with Emily Rizzo) of Soul Soil Healing. I come from a background of gardening, prison abolitionist organizing and queer-centered community-building, and have been working as a psychologist providing decolonial trauma-informed therapy for the last 9 years. I'm also passionate about doing research that can inform efforts to address social problems. Right now I'm working on an exciting project to help figure out how to get trans folks any support they need to access gender-affirming care. I've also done research on how to stop male violence, and how to build community resilience while resisting state-sanctioned violence. I’m passionate about learning from the plants, microbiome, and animals all around us as we collectively heal, decolonize, and create a more life-giving society.
Zo Clement They/Them
​SSCF Childhood Education Specialist
SSCF Board member
Land Acquisition Team
Hi folks! I’m Zo (they/them) - an educator, abolitionist, vegan soft serve lover, drag artist, and always-aspiring world builder. I’ve worked in the fields of special education and social justice in classrooms for approximately 15 years, and worked on small scale farms for 6. I spend my free time playing w my dog Ruby, strengthening queer family and mutual care networks, reading about transformative justice, and watching Drag Race. Lol. I’m a nonbinary/trans, white, Scotch/Irish and associate Patawomeck-enrolled (VA tribal nation) neurodivergent doing their darndest to live their life for collective liberation. Learning forever along the way. I’m extremely excited about Soul Soil - the people, the land, and the opportunity to build community with all our relations. <3
Emily Rizzo She/Her
​SSCF Land Acquisition Team
Soul Soil Healing Lead Supervisor
Hi fam - I'm Emily/Em Rizzo, a healer, mom, earth loving, star gazing, queer, gender expansive femme. Being apart of Soul Soil Collective and Soul Soil Healing (co-founded with Kris Gebhard) has been a long term dream come to fruition. My goals are to help create a land based healing space for community to work through trauma, feel grounded and aligned in body, expand personal visions and find joy/sense of self. I'm a mental health therapist through the teachings of anti-racism, abolition, mindfulness, disability justice, and trans health & liberation. Outside of therapy work I'm moving, dancing, listening, watching, playing, learning, and loving.
Board of Directors
Aaron Pitsenberger -- President
Michelé Prince -- Secretary
Kris Gebhard -- Treasurer
Zo Clement -- Director
Ruth Tyson -- Director
Thorn Chen -- Director