Nikki Marín Baena

Nikki Marín Baena grew up in a Colombian immigrant family in North Jersey. Textiles took her from the Northeast all around Appalachia. While she was an art student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, she got her feet wet in co-ops when she started working at Weaver Street Market in Carrboro, NC as a grocery stocker. From there, she was hooked. She went on to work with worker co-ops owned by immigrant women in the mountain of western North Carolina, and then spent a couple of years working to expand public awareness of worker co-ops in Texas. Nikki currently wears multiple hats with the Democracy at Work Institute, Southern Grassroots Economies Project, and Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund. She loves working with church ladies more than almost anything else.