Summary: Asha Gomez is owner of Spice to Table in Atlanta, GA, where she currently resides. In 2013, her restaurant Cardamom Hill received a James Beard Award nomination for Best New Restaurant. Asha was born in Kerala, the southwestern-most state of India. The area’s unique and multilayered culture, a result of its vital position on the ancient spice routes between Europe and Asia, provides much of the inspiration for Asha’s enterprises. Her Kerala fried chicken has been a draw at the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival and won the People’s Choice award at the city’s first annual Mother Clucker Fried Chicken Festival. Recently, Asha also created a “culinary conversation” event studio called The Third Space in Atlanta. Asha’s first cookbook entitled My Two Souths, was recently released. Katherine Miller founded Table 81, a full-service communications firm that works with clients in the nonprofit, philanthropy, and socially responsible business fields. Katherine designs global communication campaigns to raise awareness about important issues, inspire people to take meaningful action, and result in lasting changes in policy, politics, and business practices. Katherine is also a founder of the Chef Action Network (CAN), a project of the James Beard Foundation and Osprey Foundation. Recognizing that food is a national passion, affects the quality of consumers’ everyday lives, and has potential impact on human, environmental, social, economic health. CAN is focused on harnessing the power of America’s preeminent chefs to help create awareness, inspire action, and aggregate credible resources to proactively address a broad range of policies relevant to issues areas important to the chef community. CAN provides tailored research, policy, and advocacy support to chefs that participate in the James Beard Foundation’s Chef Policy Boot Camp and Food Policy Salons.
