Mission
Mission
The Kind Kitchen Group mission is to drive social change through food, education, and community empowerment. Our equity-driven programs nurture youth success, catalyze food entrepreneurs, alleviate hunger, and unite people across diverse backgrounds through the transformative power of food.
Vision
Vision
We envision a future where all people achieve food security and economic opportunities in an inclusive environment. We can write a new story of health, pride, and uplifted voices by creating caring ecosystems to support talent development that enable individuals to reach their full potential equitably.
meet Our co-founders:
meet Our co-founders:
Co-Founder, CEO
Chef
Sicily
Celebrity chef Sicily advocates for communities through food's power to heal and connect. Tracing her lineage to an enslaved ancestor who was a plantation cook. Sicily founded The Kind Kitchen Group to meet marginalized groups' needs for nourishment, jobs, and education.
Armed with devotion and a vision to uplift overlooked talent, Sicily leads food literacy initiatives responding to hardship with heart. Her standards come from breaking barriers facing women chef trailblazers of color.
Sicily believes progress united in care, creativity, and community can elevate us further than any dish. At her welcoming table, food is a sacred space where all experience belonging.
Co-Founder, Board Chair
Chef
Melanie
Wilkerson
Award-winning chef Melanie Wilkerson, Co-Founder and Chief Operations Officer of The Kind Kitchen Group, brings 15 years of culinary artistry and heartfelt hospitality to her role. Her journey with food began in North Carolina gardens and continued through her education, earning a Bachelors in Culinary Arts and Management. Melanie excelled in coveted roles at renowned 5-star resort restaurants, earning Michelin Bib Gourmand and Forbes Star accolades for her locally-sourced seasonal delicacies.
Beyond her head chef duties, Melanie found fulfillment in mentoring upcoming minority talent, nurturing future generations' skills, pride, and possibility. As executive leader of The Kind Kitchen Group, she now channels her accomplishments to broader missions empowering communities through food access and education. With relentless standards, compassion, and vision, Melanie stewards an ecosystem uplifting those often overlooked, shaping dreams into reality one dish, one meal, and one student chef at a time.
meet
Our
board
The leadership team and board of directors mirror the brilliant diversity sustaining our communities from the ground up. Our programs shatter ceilings by developing talent often overlooked, and bridge education with heritage, economic mobility, and wellbeing. Through authenticity, heart, intuition, and minority-governed expertise, we equip all people with the ingredients, utensils and nutrients to unlock barriers coded by false narratives...then watch them soar.
Leigh-Ann Martin
Therese Nelson
Melanie Wilkerson
Board Chair
Vice Chair
Secretary
Tamara Goron
Treasurer
Sicily Johnson
Board Member
Megan Stillwagon
Korsha Wilson
Savannah Bowman
Board Member
Board Member
Board Member
Our Board of Directors embodies the inclusive spirit of The Kind Kitchen Group's mission. We walk the talk of diversity reflected through our organization’s majority woman and person of color-led governance body.
Our cross-cultural board insights fuel equity-driven decisions that break barriers. We pride collaborative leadership building community resilience through nourishment and empowerment. Each voice expands our worldview - strengthening impact.
