As co-founder of Black Farmer Fund, she helped grow one of the Northeast's most consequential reparative investment vehicles, a $15M integrated capital fund that has redirected resources toward Black farmers and food entrepreneurs while reimagining what due diligence, governance, and community wealth look like when built from the inside out. The work earned her recognition as a 2023 James Beard Foundation Humanitarian of the Year and a place on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Impact list.

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Olivia Watkins operates at a frontier most institutions haven't found yet: the place where racial equity, ecological regeneration, and patient å converge.

An impact investor and systems builder, Olivia has spent nearly a decade designing financial infrastructure for communities that the mainstream economy was built to exclude.

She brings that same orientation to her board role at Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT, a $100M organic farmland trust, where she chairs the finance and governance committees and engages directly with the mechanics of for-profit land stewardship, investor accountability, and long-horizon ecological returns. Deep fluency in both community development finance and institutional land investment is rare. Olivia holds both.

Her thinking on reparative finance shapes emerging practice across the field. The core distinction she draws is between investing with intention and investing to repair. She advises organizations on the architecture of just capital: how to structure it, how to deploy it, and how to sustain it long after the founding moment has passed.

She is based in the Hudson Valley, where land stewardship is not an abstraction.

A Conversation with Olivia Watkins of Black Farmer Fund

Join Black Farmer Fund Co-Founder and President Olivia Watkins as she shares about this emerging community investment fund striving to create a more equitable food system for black farmers and food business owners.

PODCAST

  • MBA Series Ep. 11: Olivia Watkins: Black Farmer Fund and Closing The Racial Wealth Gap in the Food Industry

    Olivia Watkins: Black Farmer Fund and Closing The Racial Wealth Gap in the Food Industry Next Economy Now: For the Benefit of All Life

  • Two amazing women working to see a thriving and racially just agricultural ecosystem

  • Olivia Watkins, President of Black Farmers Fund

What People Saying

  • "Working with Olivia is a masterclass in intentionality. She doesn’t just move resources; she reimagines the power dynamics behind them. Her work with the Black Farmer Fund has been transformative for our network, proving that community-led governance is not just possible, but essential for long-term ecological and economic health."

    — Managing Director, Global Impact Fund

  • "Working with Olivia is a masterclass in intentionality. She doesn’t just move resources; she reimagines the power dynamics behind them. Her work with the Black Farmer Fund has been transformative for our network, proving that community-led governance is not just possible, but essential for long-term ecological and economic health."

    — Co-Founder, Regional Agricultural Cooperative

  • "Olivia’s insights on reparative finance shifted the entire focus of our annual summit. She has a gift for making 'reparative' concepts feel actionable and urgent for institutional investors. Her thinking is at the absolute frontier of social impact, and her presence is as grounding as it is inspiring."

    — Program Director, Sustainable Finance Forum

Let’s connect.