BlogHer Food '10 : Speakers

With a diverse culinary background, cooking expert Aida Mollenkamp has been engaging in all things food for more than a decade. Currently, she is host of the Food Network’s popular “Ask Aida”, where she shares her knowledge of food while dishing out culinary therapy. On May 31st, Aida will debut a second show, “Foodcrafters,” for the Food Network's new sister network, Cooking Channel. In “Foodcrafters,” Aida leaves the kitchen to uncover handmade food finds from around the nation. Growing up with an Italian-American mother and a French stepmother, Aida was fortunate enough to always be surrounded by good food. Eventually, she made her way into the kitchen and discovered her own passion for cooking. In the years since, Aida has worked everywhere from a gourmet deli and California Pizza Kitchen to the Hotel Bel Air and online food magazine CHOW.com.

Having studied Hospitality Management at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, Aida worked at Ernst & Young in Hotel and Restaurant Consulting before traveling to Europe to attend culinary school at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu Paris. While studying in the City of Lights, she book-ended her time with stints in Florence, Italy, where she learned to speak Italian, to cook the food, and to enjoy life – something that has stuck with her ever since. In 2004, Aida graduated with a Grand Diplôme from Le Cordon Bleu Paris.

In January 2005, Aida joined San Francisco-based CHOW.com, a web site created for food and drink enthusiasts. As the Food Editor, Aida regularly appeared in instructional videos for the site, ran the test kitchen, worked as a lead food stylist and developed recipes and story ideas.

When not hunting out the hottest restaurants, searching for the newest artisanal products, or hosting her friends and family at laidback dinner parties, Aida can be found giving back to the community. She lives by the belief that good knife skills lead to good life skills and works with Share our Strength's Good Food Gardens program, helping kids to foster their relationship with food and, ultimately, boost their confidence.

Amanda Rettke is the creative force behind iambaker.net and iammommy.net. Her blogs showcase baking and all things parenting. Amanda's award winning recipes and designs have been featured all over the web, on several television programs, as well as international newspapers and publications. Her self-deprecating sense of humor will keep you laughing and her pictures will inspire you to be the best baker and parent you can be!

Audra Wolfe, PhD, is a Philadelphia-based food educator, writer, and editor. She learned food preservation techniques growing up on her parents’ farm in Southern Indiana and chronicles her adventures in growing, making, preserving, and eating food on her blog, Doris and Jilly Cook.

Carolyn Jung is a James Beard award-winning food and wine writer based in Silicon Valley, California. She is the former food writer/editor of the San Jose Mercury News. Currently, she writes for the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco magazine, Coastal Living, Food Arts, Via, East Bay Express, Oakland magazine, and the online site, Tasting Table San Francisco. In 2008, she created her blog, FoodGal.com, and in 2009, it was awarded second place for “best food blog” in the nation by the Association of Food Journalists.

Cheryl Sternman Rule is a widely published freelance food writer in print and online, and the voice behind the popular food blog 5 Second Rule.  She writes The Daily Feed column for iVillage five days a week, and is a regular contributor to Nourish Network.  Cheryl’s work has also appeared in Cooking Light, EatingWell, Vegetarian Times, Sunset, Body + Soul, Culinate, Edible San Francisco, and numerous other national magazines and websites.  Her first cookbook, a collaboration with award-winning photographer Paulette Phlipot, will be published by Running Press in 2012.  To learn more about Cheryl, visit her portfolio website here and her blog 5 Second Rule here. 

David Leite is the author of The New Portuguese Table: Exciting Flavors from Europe's Western Coast, which won the 2010 IACP First Book/Julia Child Award and for which he received the 2009 National Leadership Award from the Portuguese-American Leadership Council of the United States (PALCUS). When not agonizing over his next book, he writes about everything from champagne to Welsh food to high tea to being a super taster for publications including the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Saveur, Bon Appétit, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Pastry Art & Design, Food Arts, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, Charlotte Observer, epicurious.com, and Ridgefield Magazine, where he was the food editor for three years. He's also the resident food geek at The Morning News. David is a frequent guest on the Martha Stewart Living Radio program, Living Today, hosted by Mario Bosquez, and often reads his work on public radio's food program The Splendid Table hosted by Lynne Rossetto Kasper. He's a regular guest on WTNH-TV, appears on The Today Show, and was profiled on Radical Sabbatical on Fine Living Network.

David won the 2008 James Beard Award for Newspaper Feature Writing Without Recipes for his article "In a '64 T-Bird, Chasing a Date with a Clam" and was nominated in 2009 for his article "Perfection? Hint: It's Warm and Has a Secret," both from the New York Times. He's also a four-time nominee for the Bert Green Award for Food Journalism, which he won in 2006. In addition, he was a 2007 and 2006 winner of an Association of Food Journalists Award. His essays have been included in the Best Food Writing series from 2001 to 2010. Leite's Culinaria, which David created in 1999, won both the 2007 James Beard Award for Web Site Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurant, or Nutrition and the 2006 James Beard Award for Best Food Web Site, a 2006 Food Blog Award, the 2005 World Food Media Award for Best Food and/or Drink Web Site, and was named Best Writer's Web Site for 2002 by Writer's Digest.

There was a time that Diana Johnson thought that if she only had $1-2 a day for food, it meant she had to live off of a fast food dollar menu.  After a year of unhealthy eating she discovered that if she just spent $10 a week on groceries, she could stretch ingredients and build up a pantry to eat better than she had imagined possible. 

She has now been on an 8 year journey of learning to cook on a tight budget has been an incredible.   Diana teaches free cooking and nutrition classes to low income families in her community, and runs healthy eating and cooking programs at the local YMCA.  She partners with local government, farms and non-profits to make sure everyone in her community is given access to healthy food and education to know what to do with it.

Diana is an award winning recipe developer and blogs healthy affordable recipes on DianasaurDishes.com along with tips on how to stretch your food budget.

Dianne Jacob is the author of Will Write for Food: The Complete Guide to Writing Cookbooks, Blogs, Reviews, Memoir, and More. Now in its second edition, the book won the 2005 Cordon D’Or International award for Best Literary Food Reference Book and the 2010 Gourmand World Cookbook Awards for Best in the US in its category. She is also the author of Grilled Pizzas & Piadinas, a cookbook she co-authored with a chef.

Dianne has judged books for the James Beard Foundation, the International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Awards, and has judged writing for the Bert Greene Award for Food Journalism.

She teaches classes on food writing and book publishing at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA; The Writing Salon in Berkeley, CA; and Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico. See her website, http://www.diannej.com, and blog, http://www.diannej.com/blog.

Donna Pierce is a national award-winning food and travel journalist, Contributing Editor for Upscale Magazine and the former Assistant Food Editor and Test Kitchen Director for the Chicago Tribune. She grew up with deep roots in Mobile, Alabama, where her family lived for five generations before her parents moved to Missouri.

Donna lived in San Francisco and Los Angeles before a return to Missouri where she was an adjunct instructor and Food Editor for the University of Missouri Journalism School.

She has traveled to Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean exploring the roots of African American culinary traditions. She is a former board member of the Southern Foodways Association, a current board member of the Chicago chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, a member of the Association of Food Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists and the James Beard Foundation.

She is the founder of BlackAmericaCooks.com and is working on the launch of SkilletDiary.com.

Elaine's career path has been anything but conventional. She worked for MTV Asia and then became a radio producer and disc jockey by the time she was 19. She went on to work in marketing and promotions for Cumulus Radio (formerly Susquehanna) before becoming a writer, producer, and on-air lifestyle correspondent for "Evening Magazine" on the CBS affiliate, KPIX-TV, in San Francisco. She received three Emmy Award nominations for her work on the show.

In 2004, she left broadcasting for the corporate world, working for financial software giant, Intuit, where she managed their external customer word-of-mouth programs and spearheaded their internal social media communication strategies. It was while she was working with various social media platforms that she decided to start her own blog about one of her personal passions: food (http://virgoblue.wordpress.com). In 2009, she became the marketing and communications manager for BlogHer, the largest online community of women bloggers.

Elaine was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, spent her teenage years in Hong Kong, and is trilingual (English, Cantonese and Shanghainese). She graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in Broadcasting and Asian American Studies. She and her husband have a beautiful young daughter named Alexis.

Elisa Camahort Page co-founded BlogHer, Inc., in 2005 with Jory Des Jardins and Lisa Stone, and serves as the company’s COO. Elisa leads events, marketing, public relations and research for the company and with her leadership, the BlogHer conference business has grown from a single conference hosting 300 attendees in 2005, to five diverse events that will host over 4,000 attendees in 2011. With more than 3,000 attendees expected at this year’s annual conference alone, the flagship event is the largest conference for women social media leaders in the world and has been described as “ComicCon for women who blog” by Variety magazine.

Elisa’s other major focus is to bring the story of BlogHer and the influence of the women in its community, to life via research, helping BlogHer’s customers glean critical insights about how women connect, share and behave online and off.  Elisa’s work leading BlogHer’s consumer insights team, as well as marketing and public relations, has resulted in coverage and profiles from many of the leading media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Advertising Age, Forbes, Fast Company, CNN, The Today Show, the Wall Street Journal, and many more.

Elisa is a frequent public speaker, bringing research data about women and online communities to life in recent keynotes at Marketing to Women, MediaBistro Circus, Fem 2.0, New Communications Forum, BlogPaws and WOMMA Marketing Summit and sessions at Web 2.0, SXSW Interactive and CES.

Prior to co-founding BlogHer, Elisa ran a marketing consultancy, Worker Bees, which was among the first companies to integrate corporate marketing strategies into the social media environment. Before bringing her marketing expertise to the Internet industry, Elisa was a senior-level high-tech marketer, helping develop digital infrastructures for voice, video and data delivery. Her last corporate position was as Senior Director of Product Marketing at Terayon Communication Systems, where she managed a team of product managers and five product lines.

Together, BlogHer co-founders Lisa, Elisa and Jory have been named among the most influential women in Web 2.0 and technology by Fast Company (2008, 2009 and 2010), Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year semi-finalists (2010) and among the seven most powerful people in new media by Forbes Magazine (2009). In 2011 they were jointly awarded the PepsiCo Women’s Inspiration Award and in 2008, the Anita Borg Institute Social Impact Award. Elisa has been honored as an NCWIT Hero.

As the co-founder of a mission-based for-profit organization, Elisa is a founding Fellow of the Society for New Communications Research and serves on the Board of Directors of the 42nd Street Moon Theatre in San Francisco, the programming advisory committee for SXSW Interactive and the Board of Advisors of the Anita Borg Institute. A native of the Bay Area, she lives in San Jose with her software developer husband.

Elise Bauer publishes the popular and award-winning food blog Simply Recipes. Six years ago, after a twenty year career in technology marketing consulting, Elise created Simply Recipes to keep a record of what she was learning from cooking with her parents. What started as a hobby during the last economic recession has grown to reach over 3 million site visitors a month, and now Elise manages it as her full-time profession. These days Elise spends most of each day cooking, taking photographs of food, and answering reader questions.  She knows it's not her life's purpose to be an online Betty Crocker, but that doesn't matter, she's having fun with it.

Elise also founded and runs Food Blog Search, a custom search engine that you can use to search thousands of food blogs for recipes.

You can find Elise on Twitter @simplyrecipes.

Georgia has a down-home attitude when it comes cooking. Using artisanal methods that harken back to Grandma’s kitchen, she prepares dishes from wild foods, which she hunts and gathers herself. She's worked in two of America’s best farm-to-table restaurants, as well as in one of the premier destination restaurants in Provence, France. It was there that she decided it was time to really get at the heart of where our food comes from and head to the source -- Mother Nature. She set her sites on the cutting edge of culinary creativity intent on pushing the boundaries of American gastronomy, from field to stream to table.  Her new book,“Food Heroes,” has just arrived in stores. It tells the story of 16 culinary artisans across the globe who are fighting to preserve their food traditions. She currently roams the world, hunting, tasting good food and meeting the good people who make it. You can read more about her work at www.GeorgiaPellegrini.com and ESPN Outdoors "The Kitchen."

Helene Dujardin is a former pastry chef with a Masters in History who grew up in Provence, and moved to Charleston, SC in the late 90s where she now works full time as a food photographer and food stylist. Her photography is an expression of her passion for seasonal fresh ingredients, as well as life, people and places. Helen dedicates herself to the art of food photography and food styling and has been a featured lecturer at several conferences around the country as well as leading or participating in several photography workshops.

She is a regular contributor to such publications as Garden & Gun, Charleston Magazine, Charleston Home as well as working with publishers such as International Focus Press, Larks and Gibbs Publishers.

She has photographed two cookbooks to date while keeping her award winning blog Tartelette (www.mytartelette.com) consistently filled with mouth watering recipes and photographs.

I am the editor of EatLocalChallenge.com, a place to share experiences sourcing locally grown and produced food. I am a San Francisco resident, and have encouraged thousands of people to pledge to eat locally since first hosting an online "Eat Local Challenge" in 2005. The site has been cited in dozens of publications including The San Francisco Chronicle, Time, the Associated Press, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, the New York Times website, Cooking Light, Fine Cooking, Chicago Sun-Times and Boston Globe. Additionally, "The 10 Reasons to Eat Local Food" has been republished in over 100 locations.

My online life began in September 2003 with a website, Life Begins at 30, where I began to voice my passion for local, fresh food and politics. It has since morphed into a personal site for my food musings and photography.

I am a regular contributor to KQED's Bay Area Bites and Serious Eats and can usually be found perusing farmers markets around the Bay Area.

I'm honored to be on the BlogHer Food Politics panel alongside some folks who I respect and admire. I look forward to a spirited dialogue and learning from the audience.

Jennifer Yu is a freelance nature, food, and portrait photographer based in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado - but she didn't start out that way.  Debating a swtich in career paths at the end of 2007, a cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatments throughout 2008 nudged her to make the leap to photography and freelance work.  In her spare time, Jennifer maintains her food blog use real butter. She hikes, mountain bikes, mountaineers, and telemark skis - she logged 28 ski days during chemotherapy in 2008.  Jennifer firmly believes in living life to the fullest.  A former NASA engineer, Jennifer holds a Ph.D. in geology from Cornell University and a B.S. in engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Justin Schwartz is a senior cookbook editor for John Wiley & Sons, where he has edited books such as the New York Times bestselling So Easy by Food Network star Ellie Krieger, the IACP Book-of-the-Year award-winning Fish Forever by Paul Johnson, and books with acclaimed chefs and TV stars such as Mark Peel, Michael White, Su-Mei Yu, Marcel Desaulniers, Aaron McCargo from Big Daddy’s House on Food Network, Mike Colameco from PBS, and countless others. Previously Justin worked for publishers including William Morrow, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster and acquired and edited books such as the IACP and James Beard award-winning 1,000 Vegetarian Recipes by Carol Gelles, the Beard award-winning Vegetables by James Peterson, and the IACP and Beard award-winning and best-selling classic How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. The author of Veg Out: Vegetarian Guide to New York City and The Marshmallow Fluff Cookbook, Justin has edited and produced articles for magazines such as Fine Cooking and has been featured in publications such as the New York Daily News and Food & Wine magazine. Justin enjoys dining out, cooking at home, and amateur food photography, and he writes a food blog called Justcook NYC, which can be seen at www.justinschwartz.com or http://justcooknyc.blogspot.com.

At Dine & Dish (www.dineanddish.net), Freelance Writer, Kristen Doyle, chronicles her culinary adventures in a fun, family friendly environment. Kristen's mission is to help others make family mealtime a priority, where families gather around the table each night to engage in great food and conversation. With recipes that are quick and simple to get on the table, Dine & Dish is a resource for anyone looking to simplify their lives in order to reconnect with their family, one meal at a time.

In addtion to Dine & Dish, Kristen is a mom of four young kids as well as the blogging mama of Culinary Snapshot (www.culinarysnapshot.com) and the founder of the ongoing Adopt a Blogger event (www.adoptablogger.net).

Laura Beck is a founding editor of the award-winning vegan lifestyle blog, Vegansaurus!, the community manager for the world's largest (and greatest!) vegetarian recipe website, VegWeb.com (www.vegweb.com), a columnist for VegNews Magazine. She can be found contributing colorful commentary and real talk to many online newspapers, journals, and blogs, including SFist, The Bold Italic and Huffington Post. She currently lives in Oakland with her cartoonist boyfriend and their adorably adorable pit bull, Hazel. Hazel was adopted through Rocket Dog Rescue, the shelter animal rescue and advocacy group where Laura serves as vice president. Laura is currently looking for wealthy people to subsidize her trips around the world in exchange for hive fives and witty repartee.

Lisa Stone co-founded BlogHer, Inc. in 2005 with Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins, and serves as the company’s CEO. With Lisa’s leadership, the company has grown from an idea for a grassroots conference into a diversified media company and a Top 5 women’s network  online, according to comScore, with 2,500+ premium blog contributors, the world’s largest in-person events for bloggers, and an award-winning social hub at BlogHer.com. As principal architect of BlogHer’s distributed, cross-platform media business, Lisa developed innovative models for profitable, premium online media, and for recognizing and compensating a new wave of content creators.

Lisa has shepherded the company to revenue of eight figures trailing for the past two years, during which BlogHer, Inc. was named among the AlwaysOn OnMedia Top 100 for 2011 and Global 250 for 2010, and as one of America’s Most Promising Start-ups by BusinessWeek. BlogHer’s flagship site, BlogHer.com, was named one of the Top 100 Websites for Women by Forbes in 2010.

A traditional journalist who left CNN for the Internet in 1997, Lisa began developing new social media business models during her tenure as the first Internet journalist awarded a coveted Nieman Fellowship from Harvard University in 2002. Lisa first blogged as part of her 2004 election coverage for the Los Angeles Times, the same year she developed and launched the first sponsored blog network for Law.com. Lisa’s expertise and vision has led to numerous innovations in the social media space.

Prior to the Nieman Fellowship, Lisa was among the early drivers of some of the most successful online communities and interactive programming for women. As the executive producer and Editor in Chief/VP, Programming for Women.com, Lisa grew the 18-channel network to a Top 30 site and oversaw all original programming and the development and integration of content community initiatives with Hearst and Rodale magazines, E! Television/Online, HBO’s Sex and the City, Bloomberg, and Gallup and Knight Ridder. 

Together, BlogHer co-founders Lisa, Elisa and Jory have been named among the most influential women in Web 2.0 and technology by Fast Company (2008, 2009 and 2010), Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year semi-finalists (2010) and among the seven most powerful people in new media by Forbes Magazine (2009). In 2011 they were jointly awarded the PepsiCo Women’s Inspiration Award and in 2008, the Anita Borg Institute Social Impact Award.

Lisa has been honored among the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company (2010), the Most Powerful Moms in Media by Working Mother Magazine (2010), AlwaysOn Top 25 Women in Tech (2009) and the Influencers of Silicon Valley by the San Jose Mercury (2009). She is a frequent speaker at leading industry events, including the Montgomery Technology Conference, Online News Association Annual Conference, EconWomen Summit, Fairchild|WWD Summit, Web 2.0, SXSW Interactive, Supernova and the AlwaysOn Summit.

As the co-founder of a mission-based for-profit organization, Lisa is a member of the Advisory Boards for both the California Endowment Health Journalism Fellowships and the Knight Digital Media Center of the USC Annenberg School for Communications. She lives in Silicon Valley with Christopher Carfi and their children.

Writer. Canning enthusiast. Jar collector. All terms that can describe Marisa McClellan. Born under the Hollywood sign and raised in Portland, OR, she now lives in the town that William Penn built, writing about local food and teaching her fellow Philadelphians just what to do with their garden abundance.

When she isn’t manning the canning pot or haunting farmers markets, she can be found working as a Web Producer at the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corportion and writing about canning at Food in Jars. She's currently working on her first book, which will be called (aptly enough) Food in Jars and will be published by Running Press in the spring of 2012.

While attending the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, Michael Procopio decided he had no interest in becoming a food critic when interning at The San Francisco Chronicle. After graduation, came to a deep understanding with himself that he didn't want to become a restaurant chef either.

Michael then wandered into the backstage television kitchens of Mollie Katzen, Martin Yan, and Jacques Pepin, where he was convinced that, while he loved cooking behind-the-scenes, he thought it might be more fun to do it in front of the camera. Much later, he somehow found himself trying to make risotto on Joanne Weir's cooking show, where he learned that it was not okay to say the word "colonic" when talking about de-veining shrimp. It has been his only food-related television appearance to date. Feel free to ask him about his other national television experience, wherein he declared himself against the colorization of classic films and got to have lunch on the set of Soul Train.

In 2006, Procopio accidentally fell into blogging, when his former college roommate volunteered him to write for KQED's food blog, Bay Area Bites. Since he couldn't think of a good excuse not to, he reluctantly agreed, discovered he loved writing, and has been at it ever since.

Today, Michael keeps his own blog, (Food for the Thoughtless), where anything and everything in his life is filtered down into a recipe, whether it be cranky children, gender-misidentified parrots, or the genuine desire to ensure that alcoholics get as much nutrition from their drinks as humanly possible.

Molly Wizenberg writes the monthly column "Cooking Life" in Bon Appetit magazine, and her first book, A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table, was a New York Times bestseller.  She is the voice behind Orangette, named the best food blog in the world by the London Times.  Her work has also been published in Best Food Writing 2009, Town and Country, and on NPR.org, PBS.org, NYTimes.com, and Gourmet.com. She lives in Seattle, where she and her husband Brandon Pettit own the restaurant Delancey.

Nadia G. (Giosia) is the creator and host of the new Cooking Channel series Bitchin’ Kitchen. An early pioneer of the online entertainment industry, Nadia G ran her own boutique 2.0 design/branding studio, but always felt something was missing – the food! So she decided to have her cake… and design it, brand it, write it, produce it and eat it too. In 2007 Bitchin’ Kitchen debuted as a three minute mobile show, in 2010 Bitchin' Kitchen became the first online lifestyle entertainment brand to successfully transition from internet to primetime.

Bitchin’ in the US & Canada
This October, Bitchin Kitchen will make its’ primetime American debut on Cooking Channel. An instant hit on Food Network Canada, Bitchin’ Kitchen is not your average cooking show. Armed with a crew of misfit food correspondents, a tea towel made of chain mail, fresh organic ingredients and a sharp tongue, Nadia G. whips up the perfect blend of food and humor. In each episode she shares accessible, inspiring recipes to suit nearly any life situation, from breaking up to making up – all peppered with her signature ‘Nadvice.’  

Nadia G’s Homegrown Food Philosophy
Fearlessness, patience, creativity and love are Nadia G.’s secret ingredients and her kitchen code to success! Trained at the culinary institute of Hard Wooden Spoon Whacks, her passion for food and cooking came from growing up in a boisterous Italian family consisting of cooks and caterers who never quite gave up the belief that Casalinga-style cuisine is the centre of the universe. Nadia G. is home-schooled, DIY and proud of it. She says “You don’t have to look far to taste some of the best food the world has to offer. I’d pit my grandmother against a 3-star Michelin chef any day.”

Cooking at Home – Bitchin’ Style
Nadia G.’s best-selling book The Bitchin’ Kitchen Cookbook: Rock Your Kitchen and Let the Boys Clean Up the Mess (skirt!, 2009) is more than just a cookbook. Providing delectable recipes and hilarious anecdotes, the book shows how even the most novice cooks can recreate the Bitchin’ Kitchen cuisine. In addition to being a chef-comedienne, Nadia G. also has a fierce sense of style. Bright red lips, wild hairstyles and sexy heels are the name of her game. In an effort to share her style with fans, Nadia G. designed a variety of items for the Bitchin’ Boutique. For the kitchen vixen, she offers zebra and leopard print aprons with matching garters, a guitar shaped spatula, hot pink diva dish gloves and rockin’ Bitchin' Kitchen tees. As Nadia G. says “It’s all about making cooking fun, and inspiring a new generation to rock their kitchen!"

Just Bitchin’  
When not racking up the accolades and awards such as nextMedia's Interactive award for the ‘Hottest Emerging Digital Brand in Canada,’ or the 2007 Wave Award for favorite mobile comedy series (she beat out Conan O’Brien!),  Montreal-native Nadia G. enjoys writing comedy songs and working on her rock solid abs.

Naomi Starkman is a founder and editor of CivilEats.com, a food politics blog which promotes critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systems as part of building economically and socially just communities. She is a food policy consultant to Consumers Union and others. Naomi co-produces Kitchen Table Talks, a local food forum in San Francisco, is a board member of 18 Reasons, a nonprofit connecting community through food, and is on the Circle of Friends Council for the Community Alliance with Family Farmers.  She served as the Director of Communications & Policy at Slow Food Nation ’08 and has worked as a media consultant at The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, GQ and WIRED magazines. She was previously a senior publicist at Newsweek magazine and was the Director of Communications for the American Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR). From 1997 to 2000, she served as Deputy Executive Director of the S.F. Ethics Commission. Naomi works with various clients on food policy and advocacy and is an aspiring organic grower, having worked on several farms.

Novella Carpenter has been urban farming since 1998. She started in Seattle with chickens, bees, and vegetables; when she moved to the East Bay in 2003 with her boyfriend Billy, they took on turkeys, rabbits, ducks, and pigs. Their adventures in urban farming are detailed in her first book, Farm City: the Education of an Urban Farmer (Penguin, 2009). She studied with Michael Pollan at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism and started blogging while taking classes there in 2006.

Rebecca Crump is a Nashville-based writer and food blogger. She spent 10 years as a professional writer and editor before driving by a bakery's "Help Wanted" sign and being hired on the spot as the baker's apprentice. She worked her way up to head pastry chef and then promptly fell in love, got married and moved to a new city, where she started food blogging as something to do "in the meantime." Last year, her blog, Ezra Pound Cake, was named one of the "Top 10 Writer's Websites of 2009" by Writer's Digest. Paste Magazine calls her one of the top "25 Foodies to Follow on Twitter." She blogs about her life and what she's cooking at EzraPoundCake.com.

A culinary school trained food journalist, restaurant critic, and author, S.j. has written for leading publications including The Washington Post, Parenting Magazine, The New York Times, Cooking Smart, Reader's Digest, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Toronto Star, and Chatelaine. She has been translated into countless languages including Mandarin, French, Russian, Arabic, and Italian and has been read worldwide. S.j. is also author of a top-selling copywriting book and contributing author and recipe writer for the popular cookbook “Hungry for Home.” She also teaches writing at North American colleges and universities including Duke University, Ryerson University, and University of California and speaks before organizations such as The Association of Journalists. These days, she is most recently found either hunched over her computer, writing cookbook reviews or food articles, or ordering too much food at the latest and greatest restaurant and surreptitiously taking notes for her newest review.

Like millions of humans in the world, I have to live gluten-free. I have celiac disease, although I chafe at the word disease. Being diagnosed with celiac changed my life, in ways that I could never stop listing. Now, I am no longer low energy, prone to falling ill, or depressed. Now, I am free. Now, I am alive.

And I don’t miss gluten at all.

Stephanie Manley is publisher of http://www.CopyKat.com, and author of the newly released cookbook CopyKat.com's: Dining Out In the Home.  CopyKat.com specializes in recipes that taste just like they were cooked in the kitchens of many popular restaurants.  Stephanie has been creating recipes on the Internet since 1995.  With her experience working in restaurants and a science degree, she brought her love of going out to eat to people's home with her recipe creations.

Susan Russo is a free lance food writer in San Diego. She publishes stories, recipes and photos on her cooking blog, Food Blogga, which is considered the "Best of the Food Blogs" by MSN's Delish.com and was featured as the "Blog of the Day" on the Julie & Julia movie website. 

Susan has two upcoming cookbooks which will be released in the fall of 2010 by Quirk Books. She is also a regular contributor to NPR’s Kitchen Window.

Susan lives, cooks, and eats in a condo in beautiful downtown San Diego. She lives with her husband Jeff, a dermatologist, who insists she always wear sunglasses and carry a sun-screen of 30 SPF at all times. When she isn't writing about her Italian-American family back in Rhode Island or life with her husband in sunny Southern California, she can be found milling around a local farmers’ market buying a lot more food than two people could possibly eat.

Susan can be found on Twitter @foodblogga.

Tami is an Atlanta-based food stylist who has been styling food for nearly 7 years. As a former fashion stylist, she's merged her loves of food and photography to become nationally published - in both print and film. She's also worked on several cookbooks, most recently The Souper Jenny Cookbook by Jenny Levison. Clients include: Olive Garden, Publix, Arby's, Moe's, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Land O'Frost, Buffalo Wild Wings, Ruby Tuesday, Atlanta Magazine, Arthritis Today, Great American Cookie Company and more. When not on set styling, Tami pursues her passions of food, writing and photography on her food blog, Running With Tweezers.