We are fortunate that so many talented and experienced individuals have agreed to speak at our festival. Expert speakers introduce all of our feature films, and often participate in our panel discussions or moderate them. Additionally, some have been known to give cooking demonstrations or guide culinary tours for us.
Following is a listing of speakers who participated in our 2015 festival.
Adam Brock is a permaculture designer and facilitator. A co-founder of The GrowHaus, an award-winning food justice nonprofit, Adam works to help build a better future through sustainable agriculture, social justice, and regenerative economics. He will introduce Inhabit and participate in a panel discussion after the film.
Amanda Scott is co-owner of 63rd St. Farm in Boulder, CO with her husband, Brian. They have owned and operated the farm, which is designed around permaculture principles and ethics, since 2007. Their 300-member CSA offers everything from veggies to meat shares to honey from their farm. She will participate in a panel discussion after Inhabit.
Andy Ricker, the James Beard Award–winning chef behind the Pok Pok restaurant empire, accumulated culinary knowledge while backpacking and working in restaurants in countries such as New Zealand, Australia, and Thailand. Having first visited Thailand in 1987, he started to regularly travel to Thailand in 1993; Ricker stays there for several months each year to study Thai food culture and cuisine. He will participate in a book signing before and a Q&A after Farang, and will introduce the film.
Chef Ann Cooper is an internationally recognized author, chef, educator, public speaker, and advocate of healthy food for all children. Also known as the “Renegade Lunch Lady,“ Chef Ann serves as Director of Food Services for Boulder Valley School District in Boulder, Colorado, and is Partner of Lunch Lessons, LLC, a consultancy for school districts going through large-scale food change. She will speak as part of the Lunch Love Community event.
Anthony Lucero is the writer and director of the feature film East Side Sushi. He has worked as an editor and director of photography for companies such as Lucasfilm, and in the world of visual effects for ILM on films such as Pirates of the Caribbean and Ironman. This is his first feature film.
Britt Eustis, co-founder of Britt’s Live Culture Foods, started the company to provide great tasting fermented foods with live culture and promote the benefits that these foods have to offer to human health. With over thirty years of experience in the organic and natural foods industry, Britt helped develop organic certification standards that natural foods and mass market grocery industries follow for food processing. He will introduce Britt’s Pickles.
Bryce Brown is the founder of the Growe Foundation, a Boulder-based non-profit that provides schools with its Garden-to-Table program. The program provides schools with Pre-K to 5th grade lessons that teach students how to grow food in their school garden, the importance of eating fruits and vegetables, and how food choice impacts the environment. He will speak as part of the Lunch Love Community event.
BVSD School Food Project Program Coordinator, Curry Rosato is responsible for education and outreach, including the Farm-to-School and nutrition education programs. She has been developing and coordinating K-12 and community-based education and action for sustainability programs for nearly two decades. Curry will speak as part of the Lunch Love Community event.
Edwin Zoe grew up in a restaurant family after immigrating to the U.S. In 2010, after starting and running a local software company, he started the Zoe Ma Ma restaurant for, and in honor of, his mother. Zoe Ma Ma is a high-quality, fast-casual Chinese homestyle and street food restaurant. He will introduce The Search for General Tso.
Eric Skokan is the father of two children who attend Boulder Valley School District schools. He is also the chef and owner of Black Cat Farm-Table-Bistro and Bramble and Hare restaurant, and owner and chief farmer of the Black Cat farm in Boulder county. Eric will speak as part of the Lunch Love Community event.
Fabrizia Lanza was born in Palermo to the renowned Tasca family, the daughter of cooking school founder Anna Tasca Lanza. She is the author of Olive, A Global History and Coming Home to Sicily, co-authored by former Gourmet magazine editor Kate Winslow. Fabrizia promotes Sicilian food practices and slow food traditions, the research of which inspired her to write the documentary Amuri: Sacred Flavors of Sicily. The school’s teaching program will be extended in 2016 with the launch of Cook the Farm, a 10-week program for international chefs to learn about culinary and horticultural production in Sicily and the wider Mediterranean.
Helen De Michiel is a Bay Area-based independent filmmaker and author, whose narrative, documentary, and new media works have been screened theatrically, broadcast on public television, collected in museums, and circulated online. This year, she joins the new College of Media, Technology and Information at the University of Colorado, Boulder as a Visiting Professor. As the filmmaker for the Lunch Love Community series of short documentaries, she will facilitate the Lunch Love Community event.
Jason Gerhardt has been a professional permaculture designer and educator for over a decade. He teaches permaculture at Naropa University, University of Colorado, and Permaculture Institute USA. He also runs a design company, Real Earth Design. He will participate in the panel discussion after Inhabit.
Drawing on his love of New York City’s classic food establishments, such as Russ and Daughters and Katz’s Deli, Joshua Pollack, a native New Yorker, decided to focus on what he loves most – New York bagels and lox! After years of product development, Joshua opened the doors of Rosenberg’s Delicatessen to the public in 2014. Rosenberg’s Deli is rooted in the two things Joshua is most passionate about: food and his family. He will introduce Deli Man.
Kirsten K. Shockey is co-author of “Fermented Vegetables,” which originated from her desires to not only teach people how to ferment, but to also push this culinary art to new flavors. She blogs at Fermentista.kitchen and Mother Earth News. She will introduce SandorKraut.
Lon Symensma is the award-winning chef/owner of ChoLon and Cho77 in Denver. Symensma’s extensive world travels and his passion for Southeastern Asian cuisine has clearly contributed to the popularity of his restaurants. He will prepare a Southeast Asian-inspired dish before the screening of Farang.
Marco Lam, renowned licensed acupunturist and herbalist at the Mandala Integrative Medicine Clinic, has been practicing and teaching permaculture and sustainable living skills for over twenty years. Originally trained by the founder of permaculture, Bill Mollison, Marco’s vision is a melding of ecological sustainability and nature-based health care where our personal healing and our land stewardship are deeply intertwined. In support of Inhabit, he will guide a tour of his backyard, which he designed according to permaculture principles.
Megan Bucholz is the founding foodie of Local Table Tours and guides culinary tours in Boulder and Denver. Megan writes both for her blog A Bolder Table and the Boulder Weekly, and is a member of the Colorado chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier. She will lead the “Downtown Boulder Sushi Crawl” event.
Patrick Padden is a practicing permaculturalist, consultant, public speaker, and educator. Patrick received his design certificate from the International Permaculture Design Course in Harare, Zimbabwe, and recently obtained a Master’s Degree in Integrative Eco-Social Design with Gaia University. He will participate in the panel discussion after Inhabit.
Peggy Markel has been designing and directing culinary adventures worldwide since 1992 with programs in Italy, Morocco, Spain, and India. She has been collaborating with the Anna Tasca Lanza cooking school and Fabrizia Lanza in Sicily for 16 years. Peggy and Fabrizia will together deliver a filmed introduction of Amuri: Sacred Flavors of Sicily.
Sandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist. His books, “Wild Fermentation” and the “Art of Fermentation”, along with the hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught around the world, have helped to catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts. During the “An Evening of Sandor Katz” event, he will participate in a book signing before and a Q&A after Symphony of the Soil, and will introduce the film.
The cuisine of Chef Theo Adley revolves around wholesomeness and allowing seasonal ingredients to shine. “When developing a dish, I always ask myself if I would feed this to my daughters,” Adley says. “Have the animals been humanely raised, and is the produce free of chemicals and treatments?” He will make Pok Pok-style wings for sampling before the screening of Farang.
Tim Brod is the owner/operator of Highland Honey Bees, a Boulder commercial bee keeper, and an educator and advocate for honey bees and pollinators. Tim has worked with honey bees and agricultural development concerns all over the world. He will introduce a film about himself, The Bee Keeper.