Mama Kuku

Mama Kuku leads with empathy as a methodology.

As a UX designer, she spent years building systems around how people actually feel, not how they’re supposed to. As a trauma-informed Kundalini yoga teacher, she learned to integrate body, mind, and spirt. And as a Nigerian-born observer, watching her family’s food get confiscated at U.S. Customs year after year, she understood that shame is a system, and systems can be redesigned.

That empathy was channeled into EscarGrow™ (patent pending).

She identified a single point of failure: Why aren’t Americans farming escargot? Centuries-old inheritance of Puritan food morality and colonial hierarchy is still criminalizing what diverse communities have eaten for centuries. The snail, one of the most regenerative proteins on earth is singularly classified as a pest.

EscarGrow™ was nominated for the 2026 EarthShot Prize. It reframes America’s most eradicated protein into the most regenerative. Mama Kuku’s Homestead is the land it grows from — where food, healing, and community are slowly being built together.

She believes the future is built by people who can feel a problem before they resolve it. It’s a practice — in the soil, on the mat, and in self-remembrance. The heart already knows…