Julia Baingbridge

Julia Bainbridge is an editor who has worked at Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, Yahoo Food, and Atlanta Magazine, and a James Beard Award-nominated writer whose stories have been published in Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Playboy, among others. Her book about nonalcoholic drinks will be published by Ten Speed Press in fall 2020.

After building a career around why and how people gather, Bainbridge pivoted into why people don't, launching The Lonely Hour podcast to explore social disconnection and other forms of loneliness. In the three years since, the show has been featured in Psychology Today, Medium’s OneZero, Women's Health, Bloomberg, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the BBC, NPR, and more.

Jonathan Barbieri

Jonathan is a fine arts painter who has lived in Oaxaca, Mexico for 35 years. His work is in public and private collections in the US, Europe and Mexico, including the fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Di Rosa Preserve in Napa Valley and the Instituto de las Culturas de Oaxaca.

He started the mezcal brand, Pierde Almas in 2007 and expanded its portfolio in 2015 to include the first ancestral corn whiskey from Oaxaca. The pursuit of firsthand knowledge about native corn in its many ecosystem-specific varieties brought him to towns and villages across Oaxaca’s Valles Centrales and to the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, la Chinantla, la Sierra Norte, la Costa Chica and Mixteca Baja. It was in these communities that he came to appreciate the deep relationship that each ethnic group has with its particular corn.

In 2017, Barbieri and an old friend, the independent documentary filmmaker Gustavo Vasquez, teamed up to produce Hijos del Maíz, a work that, through six vignettes and many more interviews, attempts to describe the profound, though sometimes degraded nexus between ancestral corn and the people who have curated its journey from its earliest cultivation into the 21 st century.

Victoria Blamey

A native of Santiago, Chile, Victoria was a student of history until she course-corrected into the professional kitchen, leaving university to attend the International School of Culinary Studies in Santiago.In 2010, she began a run of kitchen positions in the United States: as Chef de Partie for Paul Liebrandt at Corton in 2010; as Sous Chef to Chef Matt Lightner at Atera in 2011; then back to Corton as Chef de Cuisine. Victoria then shifted gears for a few years, working as both Sous Chef and Chef de Cuisine to Chef Justin Smillie at Il Buco Alimentari e Vinieri and Upland, before opening Chumley's as Executive Chef. She's now taken the helm of Gotham Bar & Grill in New York City. 

José Luis Chicoma

José Luis is the executive director of Ethos Public Policy Lab, a Mexican think tank that promotes better governance and sustainable development. He has been the editor and coordinator of the publication “Transforming our food systems: Inspirational stories and proposals to change what we eat”, and core member of the Tortilla Alliance, the Mexican AgTech network, and other coalitions that advocate for sustainable food systems. He worked to promote sustainable gastronomy and better food systems in various high-level positions in the Peruvian public sector, including as Vice Minister of Small and Medium Enterprises and Industries, Director of Export Promotion for PROMPERU, and Advisor to the Minister of Foreign Trade and Tourism.

Francesco D’Angelo, Anthropologist

Francesco is an anthropologist from Perú. He completed his studies at the Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP) in Lima. He has conducted several fieldwork projects in rural communities in the Amazon and in the mountains of his own country with different research focuses: education, economy, tourism, construction of houses, performance, gastronomy, and production and uses of images. During his fieldwork, his own research projects apply active participatory methods: he focuses on how information and knowledge is produced during interaction with others. During the past two years he lived in a rural community in Cusco as part of his former job in Mater Iniciativa, the research center of Chef Virgilio Martinez. He served as a nexus between rural community members and those interested in fine dining and exceptional gastronomy. This multifaceted experience has led him to pay special attention to the food presentation practices of the Andes – all related to his main interest, which is to make visible the contemporary socio-cultural practices of indigenous people. He believes that “we have to start by thinking from the context to table and beyond [...]. In order to know the product you need to understand the producer. Let's talk about the human side of foods.”

Angela Ferguson

Angela is a member of the Onondaga Nation Eel Clan. Angela grew up on the Tuscarora Nation in Western New York, where she learned about the growing, care and preparation of Traditional Haudenosaunee Foods. A dedicated grower of all 3 Sisters (Corn, Beans, Squash), today she manages the Onondaga Nation Farm for her community. She is also a Traditional Cook for the leaders of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy as well as her own community members. She travels all across Turtle Island to expand and share her knowledge about Indigenous Heritage Seeds and Traditional Haudenosaunee Food Preparation. She is also one of the seven original Coordinators of "Braiding the Sacred", an Indigenous network of Corn growers and seed stewards. She recently has been featured in the PBS Native America Series that aired in November 2018. Her passion for all elements of Traditional Agriculture and food preparation has resonated within all Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.

Ken Fornataro

Ken has been cooking, fermenting and preserving vegetables, seeds, grains, fish and legumes with A. oryzae, yeasts and bacteria since childhood. He was taught traditional Japanese, Chinese and Russian foods, fermentation and preservation techniques to make koji, miso, shoyu, vinegar, sake, jiangs and pickles by Aveline and Michio Kushi, William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi, and Jewish and Christian Eastern European immigrants. He is working on a book related to food, fermentation, microbiology and semiotics as Executive Chef for culturesgroup.net

Prof. Alyshia Gálvez

Alyshia is a cultural and medical anthropologist and professor of Food Studies and Anthropology at the New School in New York City. She is the author of Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies and the Destruction of Mexico (UC Press, 2018) on changing food policies, systems and practices in Mexico and Mexican communities in the United States, including the ways they are impacted by trade and economic policy, and their public health implications. She is the author of two previous books on Mexican migration, Patient Citizens, Immigrant Mothers Mexican Women, Public Prenatal Care and the Birth Weight Paradox (Rutgers University Press, Oct. 2011, winner of the 2012 ALLA Book Award from the Association of Latino and Latin American Anthropologists) and Guadalupe in New York: Devotion and the Struggle for Citizenship Rights among Mexican Immigrants (NYU Press, Dec. 2009).

Jorge Gaviria, Masienda

Jorge is the founder and CEO of Masienda. Masienda is on a mission to build a new kind of masa value chain, from scratch. Masienda’s impact-based supply chain supports more than 2,000 smallholder farmers throughout Mexico whose corn is grown using regenerative practices across more than 30,000 acres. A Forbes 30 Under 30 award recipient, Jorge has trained at Danny Meyer's Maialino restaurant and Dan Barber's Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

Prof. Darra Goldstein

Darra is the Willcox B. and Harriet M. Adsit Professor of Russian, Emerita at Williams College and Founding Editor of Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, named the 2012 publication of the year by the James Beard Foundation. She served as editor in chief for The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets and for the Council of Europe's Culinary Cultures of Europe: Identity, Diversity, and Dialogue. Currently the series editor of California Studies in Food and Culture (University of California Press), she is also the author of five award-winning cookbooks, including The Georgian Feast and Fire + Ice: Classic Nordic Cooking. Her new cookbook, Beyond the North Wind: Russia in Recipes and Lore, will appear in February 2020.

Zaid Kurdieh

Farmer, Norwich Meadow Farms, New York. Founded with his wife Haifa, in 1998, on a half-acre of land behind their house; today, their farm has expanded to over 80 acres with 5 acres of high tunnels and they sell at farmers markets in NYC and at CSAs upstate and throughout the city – serving some of the most well known restaurants in the city. Their goal is to establish that a commercially successful organic farm can benefit a regional economy.

Alice Medrich

Alice has won more cookbook-of-the-year awards and best in the dessert and baking category awards than any other author. She received her formal training at the prestigious École Lenôtre in France and is credited with popularizing chocolate truffles in the United States when she began making and selling them at her influential Berkeley dessert shop, Cocolat. She has devoted much of her career to teaching and sharing her expansive knowledge about baking. Find her on Instagram and Twitter @alicemedrich.

Rafael Mier

Rafael is founder and director of Fundación Tortilla, a nonprofit initiative that promotes corn and tortilla culture in Mexico. For the past four years he has been working on recovering a good quality corn tortillas in Mexico as well as promoting a program to preserve Mexican ancient popcorns. In a grassroots effort to promote corn and tortilla knowledge, he started a Facebook page which now accounts more than 370,000 followers. Rafa speaks regularly on the subject, speaking at more than a 150 events just in the last several years at different agricultural and culinary schools and other specialized forums.

Marc Meyer

A pioneer in the New York City restaurant scene for his commitment to sourcing locally, seasonally and sustainably, chef Marc Meyer showcases the season’s bounty through his vibrant, ingredient-driven cuisine at Cookshop, Rosie’s, Vic’s and Shuka, the restaurants he owns with his wife and partner, Vicki Freeman. 

Following the success of their first venture, Five Points opened in 1999, the duo opened Cookshop in 2005, presenting clean, inventive dishes in the heart of the bustling Chelsea neighborhood, earning two stars from Frank Bruni at The New York Times. In 2008, they expanded again with Hundred Acres, a charming and intimate SoHo restaurant offering a Southern-inspired menu. In 2014, Meyer and Freeman made their first foray into Mexican cuisine with authentic, seasonal food at Rosie’s – which was one of the first restaurants in NYC to have its own in-house masa program. Meyer’s latest restaurant, Shukette, is slated to open in late 2019.

Dr. Marion Nestle

Marion is the Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition at New York University. She is the author of several prize-winning books, among them Food Politics (2002), Safe Food (2003),
What to Eat (2006), Why Calories Count (2012), Eat, Drink, Vote (2013), and Soda Politics (2015). Her most recent book is Unsavory Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat (2018).  From 2008 to 2013, she wrote a monthly Food Matters column for the San Francisco Chronicle. She blogs almost daily at www.foodpolitics.com, and her twitter account, @marionnestle, has been ranked by Science Magazine, Time Magazine, and The Guardian as amo­­ng the top ten in health and science. 

Shauna Page

Shauna is the co-founder of Tortilleria Nixtamal in Queens NY, a tortilla manufacturing company that follows pure artisanal practices to produce fresh corn tortillas for chefs and individual tortilla lovers. She works with her Mexico-born staff to offer the daily tortilla manufacturing experience that is akin to the practices in Mexico, with the intention of establishing in the American pallet the foundational flavor of Mexican cuisine through the 100% corn tortilla, as well as the opportunity to experience a living piece of traditional Mexican culture.

Glenn Roberts, Anson Mills

A veteran of historic restaurant and hotel concept design, Glenn Roberts is a recognized food historian who specializes in matching period architecture and preservation projects with menus inspired by historic cuisine and their ingredients. In 1998 Glenn created Anson Mills, a historic ingredient production and marketing company based on the legacy of Southern rice cuisine. Today Anson Mills grows and mills organic heirloom artisan grain, legume and oil seeds for chefs and home cooks worldwide. Glenn is a founding member of the Fellowship of Southern Farmers, Artisans and Chefs; president and CEO of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation; and recipient of Bon Appetite’s Artisan of the Year Award and Food Arts’ Silver Spoon Award.

Kirsten & Christopher Shockey

Kirsten and Christopher are the co-authors of bestselling Fermented Vegetables, Fiery Ferments, and the new Miso, Tempeh, Natto and other Tasty Ferments books that came from their desires to both help people eat in new ways, both for the health of themselves and the planet. They got their start in fermenting foods twenty years ago on a 40-acre hillside smallholding which grew into their local organic food company. They travel worldwide helping people to learn to make, enjoy and better connect with their food. Their current work is building their relationship with R. oligosporus and R. oryzae and how these fungal ferments interact with grains and legumes to transform our foods for both nourishment and flavor. You can find them at Ferment.works

Barbara Sibley

Barbara is a chef and artist with extensive New York City restaurant experience. Barbara was born and raised in Mexico City. She co-authored the La Palapa cookbook, Antojitos: Festive and Flavorful Mexican Small Plates. For many years she has collected traditional, rare and ancient Mexican recipes, including 17th Century recipes from Mexico’s convent kitchens, and traditional ingredients. Her interest in indigenous cuisines was deepened by her studies in Anthropology at Barnard College. Additionally Since 1997, she has served, with Jennifer Clement, as co-director and founder of the San Miguel Poetry Week, an annual poetry conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. 

TJ Steele

TJ was born into an Italian family in New Jersey where he grew up cooking next to his mother and grandmother. As early as middle school, he preferred the kitchen to the classroom, and started as a dishwasher when he was 12 years old; and he never looked back. After working for Danny Meyer and other notable restaurants, TJ opened Claro 2017, a Oaxacan influenced restaurant in Gowanus, Brooklyn with an emphasis on seasonal cooking around corn, barbacoa, consommé and mezcal. The restaurant reflects Steele’s time spent in Oaxaca and the community of craftsmen, cooks, farmers and neighbors that have become family to him over the past dozen years. At the restaurant, Steele is dedicated to making everything by hand, including the cheeses, chorizo and moles and of course, masa. He is planting corn on his land in Oaxaca as well as working directly with Oaxacan farmers to source and import non-GMO heirloom corn.

Joshua David Stein

Joshua is an author and editor. He is currently the editor-at-large at Fatherly and host of the Fatherly podcast. His work has appeared in Esquire,The New York Times, New York, and The Guardian, among others. He is the writer of the cookbook 
Food & Beer and the children’s book 
Can I Eat That?Previously, Stein was the restaurant critic for the Village Voice and the New York Observer.

Lesley Tellez, Eat Mexico

Lesley Téllez is a journalist, cookbook author and entrepreneur whose work focuses primarily on Mexican food, culture and identity. Her cookbook Eat Mexico: Recipes From Mexico City's Streets, Markets & Fondas, was published in 2015 by Kyle Books. She also contributed to Nixtamal: A Guide to Masa Preparation in the United States, published by Masienda and Mini Super Studio in 2018. Her writing—about corn tortillas, Mexican food, masa, and more—has appeared in TASTE, Food & Wine, New Worlder, The New York Times, Saveur, Eating Well, The Kitchn, and Eater, among other publications. Since 2010, Lesley has been owner and founder of Eat Mexico, currently one of the top-rated food tour agencies in Mexico City. A Southern California native, Lesley lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

Yira Vallejo

Yira spent ten years as a brand incubator in the wine and spirits industry of New York City. In 2014 she returned to Oaxaca, Mexico and began working for Mezcal Pierde Almas developing community projects in the Zapotec village where production for the brand is based.

For the past four years, she has served on the executive committee of the annual Feria de la Agrobiodiversidad, a native seed exchange that brings together over 450 campesinos from indigenous communities across the state. Vallejo’s work as a liaison between the feria, local chefs and traditional Oaxacan cooks focuses on raising awareness of preserving the great diversity of the region’s native seeds.

In their latest project, Yira and her husband, Jonathan Barbieri are working with community leaders to expand regional networks of native seed banks as a safety net against increasingly frequent floods and other natural disasters.

Johanna Kolodny,
Guest Co-Curator

Johanna has worked in the food industry at large for over 15 years, where she has held a wide range of positions. Her overarching goal is to effect change throughout the food system. Based in New York City, she started her company, Food Systems Consulting, in 2013. Clients and services range from product sourcing for restaurants and distributors, a food waste initiative, strategy and business development for farmers, to aiding food companies in bringing their products to market.

Johanna has worked in the food industry at large for over 15 years, where she has held a wide range of positions. Her overarching goal is to effect change throughout the food system. Based in New York City, she started her company, Food Systems Consulting, in 2013. Clients and services range from product sourcing for restaurants and distributors, a food waste initiative, strategy and business development for farmers, to aiding food companies in bringing their products to market.

Mira Evnine, Founder and Curator Topic48

For more than a decade, Mira has worked at the intersection of food and design. Born and raised in the bay area of California – food, nature, travel and culture have long been at the center of her work. She has helped a myriad of companies, large to small, develop their brand and identity via multiple experiential platforms. Mira has done this in the role of food stylist, prop stylist, art director and consultant. Perennially present in her work is Mira's personal ethos of wanting people to cook and eat together more often; time and time again bringing her work back to all things around the table.