GREG ASBED

CO-FOUNDER, FAIR FOOD PROGRAM, COALITION OF IMMOKALEE WORKERS, IMMOKALEE

Asbed harvested watermelons for 18 years. Now his organization, the Fair Food program, combats abuses facing farmworkers, from forced labor to sexual harassment and wage theft. The FFP has partnered with some of the country’s largest growers and some of the world’s largest food corporations such as Walmart and McDonald’s to enforce its code of conduct, protecting more than 30,000 workers on farms in nine states.

EDUCATION: Brown University (BS), Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies (MA)

MENTOR: Osmane Deralus, a family farmer (he would say peasant) from Haiti, who invited me into his community and his family for three years in my early life and taught me how to help a community critically analyze the problems it faces, find their causes, and mobilize to solve them. He also taught me how to drink rainwater from holes in rocks with a pumpkin-stem straw, how to plant potatoes on a mountainside with a hoe and harvest peanuts with a scythe, how to play dominoes and win, and how to take on any challenge in life with humor, love, and success.

READING: Frederick Douglass, by David Blight

MOTIVATIONAL MANTRA: 'Never let their punk a@# ever defeat you.' — Boots Riley (and apologies for the profanity, but most people do actually use it)