A Boston, Massachusetts native, Ambria Coakley is passionate about many facets of food and cooking, has a special interest in using food as a mechanism for healing physical, mental and spiritual ailments.
Coakley furthers her exploration of using food as medicine through extensive traveling. She hopes to learn first-hand through her travels how various cultures approach healing. One of her ultimate goals is to equip food-insecure and disease-ridden communities with the knowledge that they can use to grow their own food and self-heal.
During her time at Spelman, Coakley was very active on campus and involved in several organizations, including Flowers of Youth Inc., an organization dedicated to teaching children how to enjoy cooking and eating healthy foods. She was also a member of Spelman’s Environmental Task Force, an organization dedicated to educating students about being more conscious and in-tune with the world around them.
View other Food Studies Scholars
“Spelman College's Food Studies Program, the first interdisciplinary food studies program at an Historically Black College and University, engages students in an innovative exploration of food interdisciplinarity and centers its connectivity to the African Diaspora, intersectionality, and food science. It is our hope that our food scholars will find the needed community, scholarship, and professional opportunities through the program to approach some of these pressing global and local food challenges. "