Oldways brought together a team of experts to help develop the African Heritage Diet Pyramid. This committee includes culinary historians, nutrition scientists, and public health experts, each focused on African descendant health and history. These advisors have been essential to the creation of the African Heritage Diet Pyramid, and Oldways thanks each one of them.

 

SARA BAER-SINNOTT, MA
President, Oldways

Sara has been an instrumental figure at Oldways since its early days, joining the staff in 1992 to work on one of the first overseas Symposiums (Food, Culture and Discovery in Spain) and the first Mediterranean Diet Conference, and being a part of the founding of the Whole Grains Council.

Sara assumed the presidency of Oldways in May 2010, on the untimely death of founder K. Dun Gifford. She now develops company strategy, oversees all Oldways projects and programs, and works closely with all members of the Oldways staff. In her years at Oldways, Sara has been an integral part of Oldways’ growth and success, helping to develop a number of its groundbreaking programs. Sara is also co-author of the much-lauded The Oldways Table, with Oldways’ Founder Dun Gifford. Before joining Oldways, Sara was the Special Projects Editor at Inc. Magazine, and she has also worked for state and federal government agencies.  She has a B.A. in Economics from Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and an M.A. in Regional Planinng from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

 

CONSTANCE BROWN-RIGGS, MSEd, RD, CDE, CDN
ADA National Spokesperson, Author

Constance is an award winning registered dietitian, certified diabetes educator, national spokesperson for the American Dietetic Association and is the author of The African American Guide To Living Well With Diabetes (New Page Books, July 2010) and Eating Soulfully and Healthfully with Diabetes (iUniverse, 2006).

Over the course of her career, she has established herself as an expert on the subject of nutrition, diabetes, and the cultural issues that impact the health and healthcare of people of color. Her work has appeared in books for health professionals and healthcare consumers, and she has been a featured expert in national magazines such as Essence, Heart and Soul, Real Health, and Diabetic Cooking.

Learn more about her work at www.eatingsoulfully.net. Follow her on Twitter and on Facebook become a fan of The African American Guide To Living Well With Diabetes.

 

SARAH DWYER
Program Manager, Oldways

Sarah is the Program Manager of the African Heritage & Health Program. As a counselor, educator, cooking instructor and community outreach speaker, Sarah has worked with a broad range of people to help them better understand nutrition and navigate/create new dietary lifestyles for their best health and happiness. Her major focus has been on translating the science behind food & health to audiences in the most engaging, memorable ways.

After receiving her B.A. in Philosophy, Sarah attended The Institute For Integrative Nutrition in New York and worked as a Certified Health Counselor & Educator in Boston, MA and Austin, TX for two years. She has given lectures on Nutrition for Addiction Recovery at the Dimock Community Health Center in Roxbury, MA and taught Nutrition for Disease Prevention at the Mattahunt School in Mattapan. As a program manager at Oldways, she collaborates with the Whole Grains Council and Mediterranean Foods Alliance and works on any number of new and longer-established Oldways programs. Her primary focus is currently the development of the African Heritage Diet Pyramid and its programs. 

 

ANGELA GINN-MEADOW, RD, LDN, CDE
Fit4D Nutrition Coach

Angela works as an education coordinator/nutrition diabetes educator at the University of Maryland Center for Diabetes and Endocrinology at Maryland General Hospital, where she counsels patients on treating and managing diabetes and other endocrine diseases. She is the owner of Real Talk Real Food, a consulting practice for health care corporations and organizations, and develops nutrition education programs for disease prevention. Ginn is a writer for the medical industry and conducts webinars for consumers on diabetes and nutrition-related topics. Through cooking demonstrations, she works with local governments on promotion of healthy eating and physical activity. Ginn is the founder of Mocha Foodies, a group of African-American nutrition professionals formed to educate members of minority groups on healthy eating, as well as to mentor students at historically black colleges and universities who are studying dietetics. Ginn is a graduate of Morgan State University.              

 

ROBERT HALL, PhD
Associate Professor of African American Studies and History, Northeastern University

Robert L. Hall has been an Associate Professor of African-American Studies at Northeastern University since 1989. Among numerous other fellowships he has held, he completed a postdoctoral fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies, and he has been a key researcher at the Center for the Study of Civil Rights and Race Relations/Oral History Program at Duke University. In the summer of 1991, he was a fellow at Harvard University’s W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-American Research. He introduced and taught the first course in Black History ever offered at Tallahassee Community College and has spent the last 40 years teaching African American Studies at universities across the country.

Professor Hall has been active in many professional associations across several disciplines and has edited numerous publications. His two most recent publications related to the topic of this project are an article on "Africa and the American South: Culinary Connections," in the Southern Quarterly and a chapter, “Food Crops, Medicinal Plants, and the Atlantic Slave Trade,” in Anne Bower’s book African American Foodways: Explorations of History and Culture.

 

JESSICA B. HARRIS, PhD
Cookbook Author, Professor, Queens College, CUNY

Educator and culinary historian Jessica Harris is the author of twelve cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora. Her most recent book is High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America. She has written extensively about the culture of Africa in the Americas, lectured widely, and made numerous television appearances.

Jessica holds a Ph.D. from NYU and is an English professor at Queens College, CUNY. She consults at Dillard University in New Orleans, where she founded the Institute for the Study of Culinary Cultures. Harris is a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, and a member of the IACP and Les Dames d'Escoffier. Her articles have appeared in  Eating Well, Food & Wine, Essence, and The New Yorker, among other publications, and she has been profiled in The New York Times. Harris has spoken about the food of African Americans on The Today Show, and Good Morning America, and at the Museum of Natural History, and has been a frequent guest at Philadelphia's The Book and the Cook. In 2004, Harris was awarded the Jack Daniel’s Lifetime Achievement Award. She was also recently inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s prestigious Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America. To learn more about Jessica, go to www.africooks.com.

 

ALLAN J. JOHNSON, PhD
Associate Dean, Professor and Chairman, Howard University

Dr. Allan Johnson is Associate Dean of the Division of Allied Health Sciences in the College of Pharmacy, Nursing and Allied Health Sciences at Howard University, and a Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences. He holds a B.Sc. degree (First Class Honors) in Chemistry from McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in International Nutrition from Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.  He has received competitive research grants from the Howard University Research and Development Program, the Howard University Faculty Research Support Program, the Howard University Faculty Research Program in the Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the National Institutes of Health.  Dr. Johnson’s research interests include factors related to ethnic/racial disparities in overweight/obesity and cardiovascular diseases. 

 

KRISTIE LANCASTER, PhD
Associate Professor of Nutrition
Steinhart School of Culture, Education and Human Development, NYU

As a Professor of Nutrition and registered dietitian, Dr. Lancaster’s research centers on the role of nutrition in chronic diseases such as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. Kristie works with African Americans and other vulnerable populations such as Latinos and older adults to understand barriers to healthy eating and to promote good nutrition. Her work includes community health promotion and examinations of the association of diet with ethnicity and country of birth among African Americans, the availability of healthy foods in low income minority neighborhoods, and other factors influencing obesity in African Americans.

Dr. Lancaster was the founder of the Minority Affairs Committee for the American Society of Nutrition, and is a charter member of the African American Collaborative Obesity Research Network.

 

VIVIEN MORRIS, MS, RD, MPH, LDN
Dietician, Director of Community Initiatives for the NFL Program,
Boston Medical Center

Vivien Morris is the Director of Community Initiatives for the NFL Program (Nutrition & Fitness for Life). She oversees nutrition education and fitness programs and projects to improve access to healthy, affordable foods and physical activity in under-served communities. Vivien is a clinical dietitian with 20 years experience in counseling pediatric patients and their families. She was raised in North Carolina and graduated with honors from Harvard College with majors in African American and Afro-Latin Studies. She received her Masters from Boston University.

Vivien’s work in Boston’s communities is extensive. A board-member, chair and advisor for several committees, she is a founding member of the Boston Organization of Nutritionists and Dietitians of Color, an organization created to meet the specific culture-based nutritional and health needs of low-income community members of African and Afro-Caribbean descent. Among numerous other initiatives she has directed and supported, Vivien created the children’s garden at the Children’s Aids Program (now the SPARK program) in Mattapan, and she serves as chairperson of the Mattapan Food and Fitness Coalition. She has received numerous awards for her community services and for her professional work.

 

FREDERICK DOUGLASS OPIE, PhD
Author, Professor of History and Foodways, Babson College

Frederick Douglass Opie lectures and writes about labor, culture, and foodways. He is the author of three books including Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, and a blogger at Hog and Hominy: Culture, Cooking, Travel, and Traditions, where he provides “Daily Musings on Culture, History, and Food with Related Recipes.” Opie has appeared on the popular American Public Media show The Splendid Table and in the NYC Media television series Appetite City. Opie is a Professor of History and Foodways at Babson College in Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in history from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.

 

 TONI TIPTION-MARTIN
Journalist, Founder of SANDE, Community Activist

Toni Tipton-Martin is a culinary journalist and community activist who, after 30 years of teaching cooking and nutrition in media and workshops, founded The SANDE Youth Project, a nonprofit organization that uses cultural heritage, organic gardening, basic cooking skills, and nutrition to improve lives. Through SANDE, Toni leads the historic preservation effort to restore a national landmark as a culinary cultural center where African American food traditions are preserved and celebrated. She also is part of a grassroots peace movement that is rekindling the pie social as a vehicle for community building. She is a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and Foodways Texas, a contributing editor to Heart and Soul Magazine, a cookbook author and publisher of the blog, The Jemima Code.

 

KATHERINE TUCKER, PhD
Professor and Chair, Department of Health Sciences,
Northeastern University

Dr. Tucker is currently a member of the American Society for Nutrition executive board of directors, as chair of the Nutritional Sciences Council. She is also an associate  editor for the Journal of Nutrition. For many years before moving to Northeastern, she was Professor and Director of the Dietary Assessment and Epidemiology Research Program at Tufts University. Her expertise lies in nutritional epidemiology, public health nutrition, and health disparities and nutritional status of high-risk populations.

Katherine has authored and co-authored over 250 study publications, including research on dietary intake in African American adults, the traditional eating patterns of Puerto Rican adults, and Mexican American dietary patterns and obesity.  In May 2010, Katherine and her team were awarded an NIH grant for a Center on Population Heath and Heath Disparities to study heart disease in Boston’s Puerto Rican community—a major event and continuation of her previous work within the Puerto Rican communities on chronic disease.

 

GAIL PETTIFORD WILLETT
Nutrition and Health Coach

Gail Pettiford Willett, a board member for South African Partners, has worked in the human services field for 30 years. She recently retired as the Program Coordinator for the Cambridge Public Library and is now a Nutrition and Health Coach. She has worked as a consultant and researcher of children's books and was the owner/founder of Savanna Books, a bookstore specializing in books about children of color. She has traveled extensively and is an avid quilter.

 

WALTER WILLETT, MD, DrPH
Chair and Frederick J. Stare Professor, Department of Nutrition,
Harvard School of Public Health

Dr. Willett is a renowned physician, nutrition researcher, and Chair of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. He is also a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Willett is the principal investigator of the second Nurses’ Health Study, a compilation of studies regarding women's health and risk factors for major chronic diseases. He has published over 1,000 scientific articles regarding various aspects of diet and disease and is the second most cited author in clinical medicine. In the public eye, Willett is perhaps best known for his 2001 book Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, which presents nutritional information and recommendations based on the currently available body of nutrition science.

Presently, Walter is working within the Harvard School of Public Health’s programs in Tanzania, in efforts around AIDS and nutrition in East and Southern Africa.

 

AKUA WOOLBRIGHT, PhD
Senior Healthy Eating and Wellness Educator, Whole Foods Market
  
With a Ph.D. in Nutritional Science and an MA in Sociology, Akua has been a strong embassador for community health elevation for many years. As the Wellness Educator at Whole Foods Headquarters, Akua develops healthy eating and outreach programs, conducts educational trainings, and coordinates regional and local healthy eating specialists.

Akua has been hands-on and worn many hats in her nutrition career, working as both an HIV nutritionist and research associate at Howard University Hospital, as a cooking instructor for The Cancer Project, and as a Public Health Nutritionist for Washington D.C.’s Deptartment of Public Health. Akua is a Ph.D. graduate of Howard University and received her Bachelor’s degree at Southern Methodist University. 

 

Oldways thanks the Walmart Foundation for making possible
the development of the African Heritage Diet Pyramid through
its grant support.