ED & Board Directors Bios/Partners

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Sean Brennan is the founder and executive director of the Brain Food Garden Project (BFGP). As a social entrepreneur, Sean embraces the rapidly growing field of therapeutic medical research and practices known as the “food as medicine” movement. He launched BFGP to raise awareness about the holistic benefits of food on psychological and physical health.

Prior to starting BFGP, Sean founded MSB Creative Restaurant Consulting and managed operations for several successful restaurant and hotel brands in New York City. A fourth-generation restaurateur, Sean began his career as a host in his family's restaurant at the tender age of three. He has performed virtually every role in a restaurant imaginable, proudly continuing his family’s tradition of serving amazing food and providing gracious service. 

Sean’s life changed in 2010 when he was diagnosed with clinical depression and later rediagnosed with bipolar disorder. Unable to continue in his profession, he embarked on a path of healing that led him to create BFGP. In 2016, Sean graduated from The Howie T. Harp Advocacy Center (HTH) and became a mental health peer advocate. He has also studied urban farming and food justice at Farm School NYC. 

Sean is in demand as a guest lecturer and classroom facilitator, speaking about food, mental health, and the benefits of the peer approach. He has addressed psychiatric fellows at Columbia University, New York State congressional leadership, InUnity Alliance workshop attendees, and trainees at HTH. 

He has been featured on Spectrum News NY1 as "Person of the Week," received a Community Partnership Award for BFGP by Baltic Street Wellness Solutions, and was recently nominated for the first-ever New York City mayor’s award for “Leading the Charge” at the 2024 Peer Support Workers breakfast.
 

Sean has completed his first book, The Compassionate Path: Navigating Mental Health Peer Advocacy and Nonprofit Development, which will be published by Amazon Pro in 2025. 

Ms. Mujota began her career in financial services, providing asset management to high net worth individuals, institutions and companies for over a decade. She has held leadership roles at financial services firms and has served in both appointed and elected positions in government in her home country of Nigeria. In the private sectors, Ms. Modupe has helped her own firms and those of her clients to improve internal processes, cultivate and train new talent and maximize revenue. As a public servant in Nigeria, Ms. Mujota contributed to measurable improvements in educational outcomes, led media and public relations in support of critical policy change and secured significant public and private revenue for her community. In 2022, Ms. Mujota joined the management of the peer-led non-profit and BFGP partner, Baltic Street Wellness Solutions where she serves as Co-Deputy Director of Programs. Ms. Mujota is passionate about service and generational empowerment through education, advocacy and representation.

Ms. Hammock began her career in the field of healthcare administration with roles in marketing and public relations, staffing, and data management. After pursuing her Masters Degree in Mental Health Counseling, Ms. Hammock worked for several years in various capacities at the Community Service Board of Central Georgia, which provides assessment and treatment for mental health and substance use disorders across ten rural counties in Georgia. For the last ten years, Ms. Hammock worked as the student affairs coordinator at a community technical college, where among other things, she was responsible for equity education and for promoting engagement and retention of various underserved and special populations. Ms. Hammock is currently focused on volunteering her time to support grassroots projects in the mental health arena, including BFGP. Ms. Hammock is a member of the Washington County Mental Health Task Force, a group of stakeholders that was formed in 2023 to advise on the integration of behavioral health workers and peers into the law enforcement and first responder teams in her rural Georgia community, and which has since championed several issues to improve services, systems coordination and public awareness related to mental health and substance use.

Ms. Bakewell is a registered landscape architect, the Founding Principal of Brook Farm Group LLC and the Executive Director of BioCities, a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to reconnect humans and nature in urban settings through projects, research, and education. She has devoted her 20+ year professional and academic practice to the exploration and creation of ecologically productive and high performance landscapes through connecting natural processes to local and regional ecosystems, infrastructure and cultures. Ms. Bakewell has participated in several taskforces addressing critical environmental issues for NYC and has taught food and living systems in the Products of Design Master Program at the School of Visual Arts from 2013-2019. Ms. Bakewell has lectured nationally and has taught numerous graduate-level environment planning seminars and urban ecology studios at Yale, Harvard, Columbia and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. Ms. Bakewell’s organization, BioCities, is currently the fiscal sponsor for Brain Food Garden Project.

Ms. Vite, a NYS Certified Mental Health Peer Advocate with extensive experience providing employment counseling and peer recovery support to people with mental health challenges. She is the Co-Director of the Baltic Street Wellness Solutions drop-in center the Isaac Brown Healing Arts & Community Center, located in Sunset Park Brooklyn, offering person-centered recovery support and activities for healing, such as music, art, writing and poetry. In her time at Baltic Street, Ms. Vite has collaborated with social scientists from the Center on Integrated Healthcare and Self-Directed Recovery at the University of Illinois at Chicago on several research studies, and has co-authored articles resulting from these studies in the peer-reviewed journals Frontiers in Psychiatry and Psychiatric Services, the journal of the American Psychiatric Association.

Mr. Brennan is the founder and Executive Director of Brain Food Garden Project. For the last ten years,he has dedicated himself to mental health peer advocacy, with a focus on promoting healthy eating, gardening and green spaces as critical wellness tools. Having grown up working in his family restaurant, Sean spent his early career in the hospitality industry, where he cultivated his management skills, his knowledge about nutrition and food systems and his belief in the power of food that is grown and eaten together to build community.  Since being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2010, Mr. Brennan has focused on providing peer advocacy, training, and mentorship to others living with mental health concerns.  Always a fierce advocate for his LGBTQ+ peers, Mr. Brennan’s vision for Brain Food Garden Project is centered around a commitment to inclusion and racial and economic justice. Mr. Brennan is a NYS Certified Mental Health Peer Advocate and has also completed extensive training at both the NYC Farm School and the Urban Justice Center’s Systems Advocacy Program. After over 5 years working for the country’s oldest and largest peer-led organization, Baltic Street Wellness Solutions, Sean left his management position in late 2024 to focus on his vision for Brain Food Garden Project.

Ms. Gilborn is a Social Worker and lifelong New Yorker, with over 20 years of experience in nonprofit management. She has overseen services targeting various populations including people living with HIV, grandparents raising grandchildren, women impacted by substance use and adults and children living in the aftermath of profound loss or trauma. She has extensive experience securing and managing city, state, federal and foundation contracts, ensuring that services achieve measurable results and are delivered in alignment with all legal and funder requirements. She currently serves as the AVP of Government and Institutional Funding at Volunteers of America-Greater New York where she has contributed to 60% increase in revenue over three years. Ms. Gilborn is a longtime member of the NYC HIV Planning Council, a community planning body which provides binding direction to the NYC Department of Health and Hygiene on the use of its Federal Ryan White Part A award for the provision of support and wraparound services for people living with HIV in NYC and three surrounding counties.

Ms. Jay is a marketing professional and multi-creative whose talents include public relations, writing, editing and strategic marketing. She has 20 years’ experience working as a publicist, writer and copy editor for marketing and PR firms, currently serving as the Director of Editorial Services at a global marketing agency. She has also managed musicians and other performing artists, creating and implementing marketing and social media plans. Ms. Jay began her career in music PR and has worked on campaigns and events for some of the biggest names in music, including Frank Sinatra, Radiohead and the Grateful Dead. An accomplished vocalist, she regularly performs on the stages of top New York jazz venues and as a guest artist in France, Italy, Turkey and Cuba. She was one of the Top 15 finalists in the 2016 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition. Her acting credits include network and streaming television, film and theatre, and include interpreting the roles of African American icons Barbara Jordan and Nina Simone.

Ms. Hartten uses her professional training in interdisciplinary design research to focus on systemic food issues. She is dedicated to improving access to healthy foods for all. She brings this passion to her work as a lecturer, a graduate school professor and a special projects advisor. At the School for Visual Arts in NYC, she created and taught a course called Design for Sustainability and Resilience where the focus was on developing progressive humanizing solutions at the intersection of food, regional architecture and society. She has co-created and launched various projects focused on enhancing knowledge sharing between chefs, farmers and other food producers, scientists, government officials and other stakeholders, including The Dirt Cafe, The Rye Bread Project and Hungry NY. She currently lives in upstate New York and is pursuing her interest in functional medicine, and its foundational principle of food as medicine.