Amber Tamm is a young, Black woman whose life experiences weave together interdisciplinary ways of working & healing with Earth in full spectrum. She is a farmer, horticulturist and floral designer who works in cannabis, farm education, permaculture, agroforestry, urban farming, and the healing powers of the Earth. In 2022 she was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list and was awarded an Honorary Master’s Degree in Food Systems, Food Justice and Human Ecology from the College of the Atlantic.
As a young girl in Brooklyn, NY, Amber always craved more nature in her life. Growing up, she never could seem to find opportunities to be in nature and was lost on how to try, as her family had been in the concrete jungle for generations. But seven years ago, while Amber was a student at COA, her father murdered her mother, a shocking trauma that changed her whole life. The grief resulted in her spending time in silence, towards the end of which she finally went outside with the intention of bringing more nature into her life. This time helped her realize that when she laid her mother’s body in the ground, the Earth literally became her mother. It was at this very moment that she found her voice, her passion, and her future. Amber declared that she would not spend her life in an office setting, surrounded by four walls, but instead immersed in nature as much as possible. It was then she knew Momma Earth would always guide and support her. Amber’s work is to guide communities near and far, especially low-income communities of color, to connect with and discover pathways 7 for careers working with the Earth. It is her goal to spread awareness that working with the Earth can be a career path, not just a hobby, while it can simultaneously provide healing for personal trauma. She shares her life with us as a testament to the idea that the Earth provides abundance.
Tamm’s work has had numerous press features. She has spoken at NYU, Resistance Served Summit, Feeding America’s Anti-Hunger Policy Conference, the 2020 Fibershed Symposium, and the 2020 Juneteenth Celebration with A Growing Culture. Tamm is best known for her vision, “A Farm in Central Park,” for participation in Dan Barber’s Kitchen Farming Project, and for the GoFundMe she started in 2020 where she raised $100,000 in six days toward securing community farmland in the near future
Amber is based in Vermont where she’s on a mission to unlock her own land access to start a farm of her very own.