Our Team
Blake Cedergren
As the Executive Director, together with the wonderful Board, I am fully dedicated to helping this organization realize our mission of stewarding land, educating, and giving everything we can to help foster community. I have always loved growing fresh food and spending time outside with family. In 2021 I first experienced what a real community feels like when I began working as a baker and barista for a local cafe. In the spring of 2022 I assumed the role of liaison for a community garden project in tandem with joining the crew on a produce farm. Finding community and farming inspired me to spend the entire year of 2023 traveling the US, Caribbean and parts of Europe volunteering on organic farms through the organization WWOOF. The Loving Seed is the continuous actualization of these community, agriculture and ecological dreams; The Loving Seed is founded upon people, learning, observing and gathering passion to alleviate the exigent pressure facing food systems, ecosystems and economies; from the soil to the sky, I’m certain we can change things for the better.
LeAnna Lindsey
My name is LeAnna (pronounced La-Anna, rhymes with Ba-nAna) but I have also gone by Anna (Mouse). In 2020, after ending a 12 year career in hospitality management, I embarked upon a journey of the spirit that would take me (and my traveling library) all over the country - making art, writing, teaching yoga, learning to farm, and building community. I have been following a voice in my heart and soul, which led me directly to The Loving Seed’s founder and Director, Blake Cedergren. It was quickly apparent that he is driven by the same force that lights my own soul on fire and that we are on the same path, to make this Earth -our only home- a better place for all its lifeforms, now and in the future. Knowing this, I am proudly here to serve as the President of this beautiful dream as best as I can. I am a natural born leader, mediator, community builder, farmer, and fighter for Love. My hope is to help nurture and nourish The Loving Seed so it can grow and bloom, in turn providing for seeds of all kinds: plant, animal, and human, too!
Peter VanderBloomer
I am an ecologist and writer, currently working towards a master’s degree in environmental science at Yale University. As an Illinois native, rewilding the prairies of the midwest has long captivated my dreams. I’ve seen the bison grazing at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie with coneflowers tickling their bellies and eastern meadowlarks perched like golden orbs atop the sea of grass, and I’ve wondered how we let such a majestic landscape be all but buried alive by the plough. There are solid ecological reasons to devote great effort to restoring some of this nation’s prairies, but there are also aesthetic ones. I envision a future where American backpackers head out over endless seas of prairie grass, not in the hopes of viewing great walls of granite or towering redwoods, but to chance upon a stand of Prairie Blazing Star (Liatris pycnostachya) or a thunderstorm witnessed over the vastness of an open horizon. May The Loving Seed be a means to those ends.
Carlos Barragan
I am Carlos Barragan and I am thrilled to be a part of The Loving Seed. Blake and I were roommates in college, where we — on separate paths — developed a love for restorative agriculture and ecology. Mine emerged from perhaps the quintessential inverse of conventional conceptions of ecology and agriculture: urbanism. Spending my youth entirely in Chicago led me to a degree in Urban Planning; however, as I delved deeper into both my studies and my new, semi-urban university home of Urbana, Illinois, I began to think more critically of my once infallible, urbanist agenda. I began to recognize essential components of the human experience which are challenging to capture in urban life such as connections to food systems, knowledge of local ecology, or even simply existing harmoniously with the “natural” world. While I may be no conventional ecologist when compared to many of my fellow board members, I hope for my work to embolden new imaginations about what the relationship between the urban and natural worlds could look like, guiding The Loving Seed to a brighter, and greener, future.
Gary Pini
Growing up a hippie in Illinois, Art has always enthralled me. After finishing at the University of Illinois, I spent several months meandering around Europe and eventually settled in New York City for the next 40 years of my life. After working in advertising, marketing and as the International VP of A&R at Profile/Sm:)e Records for twenty years, I decided to move back to my home state and live a humble life in Urbana, Illinois. I met Blake in August of 2020; I vividly recall seeing him skate board up to the front door of the community coffee shop one fall morning. We discussed an article about Hip-Hop and Fashion. From there a great friendship was born. I’ve seen Blake progress through his University education, cafe management and farming experiences and now fully support him as we embark upon this new venture in Non-Profitship. As the treasurer, I hope to provide candor and utilize my deal-making experiences for the betterment of the organization and our earth; long live The Loving Seed.