nirali  desai

Hi, I'm Nirali, a cook, clown, skiff captain, and microcollege Dean. I’m currently the Dean of Students at a nascent liberal arts college, Outer Coast, which I helped found, in Sitka, Alaska. Alongside my work I am the captain of a powerful little 14 foot boat, named Horselegs, where I help harvest abundant local foods to feed my community.

In Sitka, food is a force we use to create community; I have a regular coffee pop-up, a gluten free baking operation, and have been the Lead Organizer for Sitka’s annual Indigenous herring ceremony (Yaaw Koo.éex’). My day to day places me at the intersection of experimental education, sustainable food and big community -- right where I want to be. 

Background

I love to learn, and I love to teach. My past is a mix of work in community organizing, experimental education and movement work. I graduated as one of the founding class members of Yale-NUS College, a new collaboration between Yale and the National University of Singapore that reimagined international liberal arts education. I then studied clowning in the tradition of Commedia dell’arte, became a certified Hatha and Vinyasa yoga teacher in English and Spanish, and recently finished a giant-scale puppet making residency at Bread and Puppet in Glover, Vermont. I’ve always had my hands in community organizing building the intercultural engagement office at Yale-NUS, crafting and implementing survivor support protocols , and living with a desire to serve and deeply integrate in all the places I live.

Where I’d Like to Go

I am especially interested in projects that honor local cultures of harvesting, eating, and gathering. I want to work with small, fast and diverse teams that build creative solutions in the food industry. I’m looking to feed others with local, subsistence and wild foods, create huge eating experiences, and learn from tradition.

  • Community Organizing

    Celebrating with my team the success of the Summer Seminar I directed for Outer Coast in 2023

    learn more

  • Food

    Processing bull kelp seaweed to turn into salsa to send across Tlingit Áani (the traditional lands of the Tlingit people)

    learn more

Community Organizing

The last 9 years of my life have been dedicated to the barn raising of schools, offices, and NGOs. In Sitka, Alaska I have been committed to Alaska Native people through uplifting the Tlingit community, culture and traditional ways of life. 

Outer Coast

Currently, I am the Dean of Students at Outer Coast, a nascent liberal arts college grounded in an Indigenous Studies curriculum, helping increase post-secondary education access for rural and native students. After refining and iterating year-long college programs, in 2024 we launched a two-year college program in partnership with the University of Alaska. I have developed and implemented an asset-based, integrated student support pedagogy that is informed by the local and ancestral cultures.

Herring Protectors

I have also been dedicated to the Herring Protectors, a grassroots organization that has used ceremony and collective organizing to stand up to the histories of colonization and genocide that have devastated the herring population throughout the West Coast. We blend advocacy, harvesting, traditional crafts, and ceremony to honor and build better worlds for the herring. The Herring Protectors work has culminated in land back on traditional harvesting grounds for the organization to build a clan house and community processing center. 

I was the lead organizer for the 2023 Herring Ḵu.eex’, a 600 person potlatch style native funerary ceremony, with tradition bearers attending from all over Alaska and South America. In this annual ceremony, we grieve the herring that we are rapidly losing. This ceremony is also a space for the introduction of new ceremonial objects (which have been exhibited at the Pratt Museum and Museum of International Folk Art), conducting tribal business, and celebrating the traditional song and dance of the region.

Distributed 1000 menstrual Cups and educational zines to fight period poverty in Singapore in collaboration with Yale-NUS College And It Goes With The Flow

Performed at the National Gallery of Singapore’s debute Simone Forti’s Dance Constructions to challenge the idea that dance can only be performed by formally trained bodies.

Was in residence at the Bread and Puppet Company, the oldest non-profit political theater company, to help choreograph and perform in their summer show.

Performed alongside Ruchi Anadkat for her artist spotlight at the artist association, Fructose, in Dunkerque, France from her research in ‘performed geometry.’

Food

I’ve spent the last 4 years in coastal Alaska, captaining a small boat, working with Indigenous harvesters and traditional food systems, and understanding the local policies and politics that determine the community's food sovereignty. I’ve led food harvesting and preparation for events ranging from art openings to native ceremonies to college commencements.

A big day in the life looks like waking up at 5 am to dipnet sockeye salmon as they travel upriver, fileting and freezing and distributing the fish to locals in need, and making a salmon chowder for hundreds of Indigenous elders.

Learning to harvest, process and live off this earth has transformed me, and I carry the teachers of the water and land with me into my future food work with new places, people and heaping plates of food.

Scallops harvested from Ellsworth Cut in Sitka, Alaska

  • Building a traditional Tlingit style fish smokehouse in collaboration with Obama Presidential Library architect Billie Tsien to gift to Master Weaver Ed Peele. (2023) Link

  • Harvesting, processing and cooking 100s of jars of bull-kelp seaweed salsa to distribute amongst native elders in the Yukon at a Ḵu.eex’ (traditional native ceremony). Elders insisted that the salsa is best with moose meat! (2022-25)

  • Starting a craft coffee pop-up with my best friend Frank called Pouring Over, sourcing specialty beans from across the lower-48 and pouring slow coffee for the neighborhood. (2022-25)

  • Processing commercially fished black cod heads for their collars and ‘tips’ to reduce the amount of fish waste that enters back into our ocean. These cod collars traveled to the Bread and Puppet Theater Company in Vermont for a large family style dinner for the whole farm. (2023-24)

  • Starting a gluten-free baking operation that included catering and weekly bakes to provide accessible treats to community members across Sitka. (2021-25)

  • Digging for butter, horse and little neck clams and cockles to jar for elders in the traditional Tlingit village of Teslin in Yukon, Canada. (2023-25)

  • Processing yellow-eye rockfish (bycatch on commercial long lining fishing boats that are unable to be sold for profit) for local tribal elders in the community. (2024-25)

  • Milking local goat, Sir Tanya, to make raw goat cheese and treats. (2024-25)

FOOD HEROES

COFFEE

  • Little Wolf Coffee, Ipswich, MA

    I love this coffee, brand, and coffee shop that is located across a middle school in a town that is hard to get to no matter which direction I am coming from. They roast in house, seasonal, ethically sourced, and easy-to-dial coffee that is floral, fruity and well-balanced.

  • Hydrangea Coffee Roasters, San Francisco, CA

    A project that is doing incredible coffee processing, from co-fermentation to thermal shocks, changing the usual path from bean to cup.

  • Onyx Tonics, Burlington, VT

    A cafe that rotates coffee regularly, helping customers refine their taste and nuance in specialty beans. Full of regulars, I have enjoyed a cortado with the same Russian couple arguing over borscht for 5 years. A small team that will trade me coffee for a gluten-free loaf of bread anytime I walk in.   

  • The Espresso Shop, North Platte, NE

    A coffee shop that has some of the best coffee in the midwest. With a variety of specialty coffee brews, it's easy to get a drip coffee to go on a cross-country road trip, or sit down in downtown North Platte and enjoy a slow pour over, stretch my legs out, and read a book. 

FOOD

  • State Bird Provisions, San Francisco, CA

    This is a restaurant collective that have a few different projects focused on seasonal local foods, beautiful gathering spaces, and a culture of teaching and sharing. I loved their dessert team (shout out Claire) who made pepper poached meringues and plum sorbet. They also had one exceptional cauliflower.

  • Four Corners of the Earth, Burlington, VT

    The best sandwiches and collection of art-deco nude paintings I’ve ever seen. When looking at the broad selection of paintings on the wall, I once asked the owner/sandwich extraordinaire if he made any art, to which he said ‘you are eating it right now’.

  • Bode’s General Store, Abiquiu, NM

    They have everything I want for a medium-to-long road trip (candy, local drinks, handmade soaps). The green chili cheeseburgers are incredible and fresh everyday.

  • La Buvette, Omaha, NE

    This is the best French food out of France. The frisée salad is perfect, both fresh and rich. I went for dinner, came back the next day for breakfast, and then went to their bakery next door for specialty meats, cheeses, breads, and perfect tiny fish to take on the road.

  • Brushland Eating House, Bovina Center, NY

    Local food served at the same time, every night its open. I’ve never been but I am so compelled by a restaurant that is energized by communal eating, Persian style cuisine, and the intersection of eating/hosting/harvesting.

  • Santa Fé Honey Salón, Santa Fé, NM

    This is the hidden food gem of New Mexico, where everyone can get a free tasting of the 20+ flavors of honey. I have bought gallons of the honey made from sap, although I am also fond of the sage/willow variety.

  • Heena Patel, Head Chef of Besharam, San Francisco, CA

    A Gujarati restaurant that tastes like Vadodora street food and my mom’s food at the same time. An innovate chef in an innovative space, creating a project that is legible to both me and my parents.

  • Aran Goyoaga, Gluten Free Baker

    I’ve learned everything about gluten free baking from Aran and her cookbooks. Once I became unable to eat gluten, finding this book changed my life. There is true joy and community around warm bread in the oven, bagels in the morning, challah on Fridays, and her book has made all of that feel possible and exciting again.

PROJECTS

I am so moved by this project that is built from family history, sustainable sushi, and a deep love for the natural world. Chef Bun’s transformation of Miya’s, after the closing of the brick and mortar restaurant, to a community-focused eating and teaching space is so exciting. His project seems truly grounded in the simple, formidable, and joyous project of feeding others, and teaching others to feed themselves.

I have been so excited by this new initiative that aims to address the loneliness epidemic by focusing on the power of connection through potlucks.  I am excited to see how this federal project injects vitality, urgency and resources into communities around the US.

I love how this non-profit has touched so many lives in San Francisco through incubating food projects of women, immigrants and people of color. The many arms of the organization have transformed what is possible in the food industry, and kept sharing delicious and diverse food at its core.

A very cool regional project that distributes Bristol Bay salmon to communities around Alaska, reestablishing old trade paths and regional relationships that have suffered through new infrastructure. I’ve gotten to see the big love, sharing and storytelling that flows through a community when salmon lands from Bristol Bay.

I’m so inspired by Heather and the work she has done in the USDA by moving federal money into tribal government’s jurisdiction so they can provide local, wild and Indigenous food to their citizens. She introduced a culture of locally harvest potlucks in her time in office and helped policy makers see the real joy and benefits of eating and sharing wild food.