Alice Waters is a chef, author, food activist and the founder and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California, which first opened its doors in 1971. She has been a champion of local sustainable agriculture for more than four decades. In 1995 she founded the Edible Schoolyard Project, which advocates for a free regenerative organic school lunch for all children and a sustainable food curriculum in every public school.

She has been Vice President of Slow Food International since 2002. She conceived and helped create the Yale Sustainable Food Project in 2003, and the Rome Sustainable Food Project at the American Academy in Rome in 2007. Her honors include election as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007; the Harvard Medical School’s Global Environmental Citizen Award, which she shared with Kofi Annan in 2008; induction into the French Legion of Honor in 2010; and induction into the National Woman’s Hall of Fame in 2017. In 2015 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, proving that eating is a political act, and that the table is a powerful means to social justice and positive change. Most recently, Alice was awarded the honor of “Cavaliere dell’Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana” in 2019, and in 2022 she received the Henry Ford Society’s inaugural Carver Carson Award recognizing achievements and innovations in environmental protection and agriculture.

Alice is the author of sixteen books, including New York Times bestsellers The Art of Simple Food I & II, The Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea and, a memoir, Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook. Her newest book is We Are What We Eat: A Slow Food Manifesto.