Supporter of the Black and LGBTQ + community, first culinary director of Cherry Bombe magazine and, above all, entrepreneur. Kia Damon she became famous at age 24 for being promoted to head chef of Lalito in Manhattan’s Chinatown and, shortly thereafter, for co-founding Auxilio Space, a non-profit food space that offers support and work for queer, trans, black and indigenous communities in New York City.
What can I say, food and activism that go hand in hand.
Who is Kia Damon
Kia Damon is a self-taught chef. Born in 1993 and raised in a large family in Orlando, Florida, Damon found herself in the kitchen at an early age and what she didn’t learn to cook with her grandmother, she learned from watching Bobby Flay and Iron Chef. Meanwhile, after graduating from Edgewater High School in 2012, she moved to New York to become chef in Manhattan, which was followed by a job as executive chef at Chinatown’s Cali-Latin Lalito restaurant at just 24.
All of these milestones weren’t painless though. Damon confesses that she was sexually harassed by a staff member and subject to racism, homophobia and misogyny.
In June 2019 he left this job and a few months later he won an episode of Chopped, which aired in August 2020. Thanks to the money he won, 10 thousand dollars, and the success of the victory, in the same month he founded Kia Feeds The People, a nonprofit that aims to provide Black Brooklynites with hot meals.
Living in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, a historically black community, one sees the effects of food apartheid. Sometimes it’s really hard to watch, so I wanted to make sure I look after my community
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Kia Damon founds Auxilio Space
But that’s not all because shortly after her, Zacarías González and Mohammed Fayaz launched Auxilio Space, a community-centric, nonprofit food space geared towards providing services, support and work for New York City’s queer, trans, black and indigenous communities. The space also hosts his program Kia Feeds The People, which supplies fresh, pantry produce to Brooklyn’s communities of color.
Everyone involved is gay, lesbian, non-binary. The mission is to tackle hunger within the community, which is something we don’t really talk about even though I have experienced it myself.
2020 for Kia Damon was the year of the greatest satisfactions. In fact, last year she was appointed culinary director of the magazine Cherry Bombe where he runs a test kitchen and hosts a live Instagram show, On the Line, where it gives space to the work of contemporary chefs. Thanks to the social network, Damon shares his experiences and talks about current issues recalling the obstacles he had to overcome, the attacks and psychological problems he had. His activism has also turned into support for the struggles on the occasion of the Black Lives Matter and, with her association, she tries every day to tackle food insecurity and create food-related job opportunities for queer and trans people of color. In 2021 it entered the ranking of Forbes Under 30 “Food & Drink”.
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