Co­lette Cyrus- Bur­nett

CEO, Glob­al Food War­rior

While work­ing with UN Women, I learnt that world­wide we need­ed a rev­o­lu­tion around ac­cess to nu­tri­tion­al­ly sound food, no mat­ter what comes. We NEED food grow­ing with­in walk­ing dis­tance of our home to be sure to sur­vive. What COVID-19 has taught us is the need to be able to eat de­spite every un­fore­seen sup­ply chain chal­lenge, and we need child hunger to END for­ev­er.

Glob­al Food War­rior was birthed

While tra­di­tion­al farm­ing is seen as hard work in the hot sun, our work at Glob­al Food War­rior is “heart­work” done for the love of mankind. We are spread­ing the move­ment of har­ness­ing our health and well­ness through nu­tri­tion by help­ing coun­tries and com­mu­ni­ties hy­per-lo­calise their food sources us­ing the most in­no­v­a­tive and au­to­mat­ed grow­ing sys­tems that are cus­tomised to their needs. We achieve this by fo­cus­ing on youth em­ploy­ment and en­gage­ment at every stage. This way we are able to im­pact child hunger glob­al­ly in a sus­tain­able way by en­cour­ag­ing more youth in­to the in­dus­try in very di­verse roles. Young peo­ple are at the helm of every project, as we get to teach while learn­ing from them, we im­ple­ment in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions like large scale, so­lar pow­ered, wind cooled ver­ti­cal farm­ing green­hous­es which grow nine times the food in the same space that tra­di­tion­al farm­ing can, us­ing on­ly 10 per­cent of the wa­ter. We digi­tise as many process­es with­in the in­dus­try that we can as we en­gage young minds in the won­der of Agri­cul­ture. Glob­al Food War­rior ex­ists to show what love can achieve through food.

Vi­sion re­quires Courage

Twen­ty years in Bank Branch Man­age­ment in NYC, taught me the reins of my life need­ed to be in my own hands so I left in 2009 to open Su­per Wings NY. A year lat­er I bat­tled chef Bob­by Flay in a Throw­down and WON! We be­came the most fa­mous wing spot in NYC, win­ning every con­test we ever en­tered. The Best Wings In Brook­lyn Con­test three times! In­ter­na­tion­al Best Wings in Buf­fa­lo, every chef bat­tle and count­less TV and lo­cal news out­lets. En­tre­pre­neur of the year 2013, and 2015. Brook­lyn’s best Busi­ness 2013 and Best of NYC 2012. We were win­ning BIG TIME with lines out the doors and around the cor­ner each day. And on SU­PER­BOWL. It was WILD! But burnout came fast!

Awards and ac­co­lades are not enough

How many plaques and procla­ma­tions can your man­tle hold to col­lect dust? My eye wouldn’t stop twitch­ing and my health de­te­ri­o­rat­ed BIG TIME. I had to shift and do so quick­ly. A bar­rel of joy showed up when I part­nered with my Al­ma Mater, Medgar Evers Col­lege to work with their Bea­con pro­gramme to teach chil­dren how to make healthy eat­ing choic­es. Teach­ing them made me laugh so hard! They would be bounc­ing out their seats. There I learnt that more than 10 per­cent of NYC chil­dren went to school hun­gry! Yes, in Brook­lyn there are sev­er­al pock­ets of the com­mu­ni­ty that are re­ferred to as “FOOD DESERTS” and chil­dren can have no food to eat be­fore com­ing to school and all those chil­dren looked just like me. That, to me, was un­ten­able! We got to work on cre­at­ing grow­ing sys­tems with­in the schools in those neigh­bour­hoods. We grew pep­pers, toma­toes, let­tuce, some­times in­side in grow beds or ver­ti­cal planters, some­times in ground in en­closed spaces/green­hous­es. We honed our craft, we part­nered with sci­en­tists and botanists and cre­at­ed so­lu­tions of every kind. School teach­ers start­ed reach­ing out for sys­tems for their class­rooms and the move­ment had be­gun!

The goal is self-mas­tery

Then I learnt that in the Caribbean and par­tic­u­lar­ly in Trinidad and To­ba­go, we went from be­ing food se­cure in the 1960’s where we would grow enough to feed our en­tire pop­u­la­tion, to this day in 2021, where we im­port be­tween 70 to 80 per­cent of our food! Alarm­ing how vul­ner­a­ble that leaves us! Trinidad and To­ba­go be­ing my home­land, this dis­turbed my core.

In 2015, I closed all three of my restau­rants and took the leap. Time to piv­ot and not be held hostage by oblig­a­tions I had cre­at­ed for my­self. Tough call, this was my ba­by. Su­per Wings NY was my heart, my team, my fam­i­ly. I LOVED it. I had cus­tomers who would come from far and wide just for some wings and a hug. I think it was most­ly for the wings though. Our gin­ger buff and Tri­ni Tamarind wings are leg­endary!

It took some rad­i­cal self-care to re­set but to­day I am care­ful to set bound­aries and get silent so I hear my in­ner voice…so when it says no, it’s no!

When do­ing some­thing that has nev­er been done, you can’t do it wrong

We build ecosys­tems that ho­n­our na­ture and en­cour­age in­no­va­tion. I am here to help en­ti­ties see how eas­i­ly they can im­pact the food se­cu­ri­ty move­ment while tak­ing good care of their com­mu­ni­ty as part of their cor­po­rate re­spon­si­bil­i­ty goals. These com­pa­nies can im­pact cli­mate change pos­i­tive­ly and con­tribute to our over­all GDP by in­vest­ing in food. We all need to eat so grow­ing food is like grow­ing mon­ey. Pri­vate com­pa­nies can part­ner with Glob­al Food War­rior, by choos­ing to in­vest and grow more food with bet­ter op­er­at­ing sys­tems to op­ti­mise ca­pac­i­ty and achieve fi­nan­cial suc­cess. Hops in­clud­ed!

That there are bil­lion­aires in this world, com­mer­cial­is­ing the moon, tells me we have enough re­sources to feed hun­gry chil­dren. We just haven’t made it a pri­or­i­ty. We are here to shine light on that!

This virus has taught us how frag­ile life re­al­ly is, we can wake up to­mor­row, or NOT. It’s that sim­ple. So, I en­cour­age women to seize the ad­ven­ture that is life, kick off your shoes and dance with the di­vine. Af­ter all, we sim­ply can­not eat our cars.

To con­nect with us:

https://www.glob­al­food­war­rior.com/

globafood­war­rior@gmail.com