2019 Festival Participants

Gail Arnold

Gail Arnold has been cooking professionally since she was 18 years old. Classically-trained in Paris, Gail has worked in restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and Paris. In addition to teaching private cooking classes, Gail has worked for director Steven Spielberg as his family’s personal chef. Gail has a masters in elementary education, has worked as a reading specialist, and tutors students in reading.

Gail loves to integrate different learning opportunities while teaching culinary skills to kids. When she’s not cooking and teaching, Gail loves to fly airplanes, ride her bicycle...and do more cooking.

Maggie Battista

Maggie Battista is a cookbook author, writer, marketing strategist, and event designer. She’s also co-founder of The Fresh Collective, a networking group for female food entrepreneurs, and co-host of the Made Fresh podcast, a show that brings fresh perspectives to a range of topics like food & cooking; entrepreneurship; wellness; the complexities of midlife; and more. In 2007, she founded Eat Boutique, an award-winning online food shop and story-driven recipe site. After creating pop-up Eat Boutique food markets for 25,000 guests, she’s working to open her first retail food concept space and also advising operators who are creating mixed-use retail and restaurant developments. Maggie’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Eater, Boston Magazine, The Boston Globe, The Financial Times, and Refinery29 and has written for Food52, Time Out New York, Southern Living Magazine, The National Post, and The Kitchn. A New Way to Food: 100 Recipes to Encourage a Healthy Relationship with Food, Nourish Your Beautiful Body, and Celebrate Real Wellness for Life is her second cookbook.

Erin Baumgartner

Erin is a self-avowed food nerd. In 2017 she co-founded Family Dinner with her husband Tim. Family Dinner seeks to use data and logistics to shorten the food supply chain and bring the best local food directly to people's homes. Prior to starting Family Dinner, Erin spent 11 years at MIT, most recently as the Assistant Director to the MIT Senseable City lab, a group that uses Big Data to understand complex systems in the urban environment. Erin lives in Somerville with her husband Tim and toothless dog, Frank.

Leigh BELANGER

Leigh is a writer, editor, and content strategist. Her book, My Kitchen Chalkboard, helps cooks plan and streamline family dinners. She works with publications, organizations, and brands to reach and retain their audiences with smart, engaging content and communications. She's also the co-host of the Made Fresh podcast. Follow Leigh on Instagram at @missleighb. 

AARON BERNSTEIN

Aaron Bernstein is the Co-Director of The Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (Harvard C-CHANGE), a pediatrician at Boston Children’s Hospital, and an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bernstein focuses on the health impacts of the climate crisis on children’s health and advancing solutions to address its causes to improve the health and wellbeing of children around the world.

In 2019, Dr. Bernstein testified before Congress on the child health impacts of climate change, drawing from his personal experience as a pediatrician having to treat children with breathing difficulties, vector-borne diseases, and trauma from natural disasters. He is a trusted voice for major news outlets, providing interviews and expertise to reporters from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, NBC News, CNN, and The Guardian, and writing articles for the New England Journal of Medicine, the British Medical Journal, and the Boston Globe, among others.

With Nobel Laureate Dr. Eric Chivian, Dr. Bernstein co-authored and co-edited the Oxford University Press book, Sustaining Life, which received the distinction of best biology book of 2008 from the Library Journal, and which has been published in several foreign language editions.

At Harvard, he is the course director for Human Health and Global Environmental Change and created the HarvardX course “The Health Effects of Climate Change” which explores how climate change influences health through its effects on air quality, nutrition, infectious diseases, and human migration as well as solutions to the climate crisis. Through this course, thousands of students from over 100 countries have learned how climate change directly impacts their lives, and what they can do to become part of the solution.

In 2015, he was awarded a Lokey-Businesswire visiting professorship at Stanford University and has also been a visiting professor at Columbia University. Dr. Bernstein has been a member of the Harvard President’s Climate Change Task Force and co-Chairs the University Food Standards Committee.

He serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health Executive Committee, the Board of Scientific Counselors to the CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and is Chair of the Board of Directors of the U.S. Green Building Council.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree in Human Biology from Stanford University, he received graduate degrees in medicine (MD) and public health (MPH), from the University of Chicago and Harvard University, respectively. He is a recipient of Stanford University’s Firestone Medal for Research and a Harvard University Zuckerman Fellowship.

An avid bicyclist, Dr. Bernstein pedals to and from work year-round.

Sarah Blackburn

Before taking on the role of managing editor an associate publisher, Sarah was recipe editor, marketing director and ad account manager at Edible Boston. She’s worked as a recipe developer, personal chef/caterer, farm stand retailer, Italian imports buyer, cheesemonger and produce buyer among various other positions in both food service and food retail businesses. A graduate of Middlebury College with degrees in the History of Art and Italian Language and Literature, she lives in Wayland with her husband and two children, spending summers fishing, shellfishing and digging in her Cape Cod garden.

Gaitskell Cleghorn Jr. (Gates)

His students know him as “Chef Gates.” As a ninth grader at Madison Park High School in Roxbury, Chef Gates recalls walking into the culinary department where “the air smelt like fresh baked goods.” That is where his love for culinary arts was born. Shortly thereafter, the young Chef Gates began working in the restaurant industry where he refined his skills that eventually granted him his title. Among many other talents (dance and playing piano to name a few), Chef Gates’s leadership and experience starting and running organizations enabled him to continue to change lives as a Chef Educator and Culinary Director. Outside of teaching, he works as a private chef and is the founder of a mixed dance group called DPR. His multifaceted talents and accomplishments can be seen through his many roles through multiple outlets in his community. He has served on several boards, including Dorchester Arts Collaborative (DAC) and the Hospitality Club at Bunker Hill Community College. Chef Gates’s unique teaching philosophy is what drives his success with the youth in his community. He believes that it is through flexible thinking and indirect instruction that students are empowered to discover and learn.

annie b. copps

Annie B. Copps is a Boston-based chef, cooking instructor, international culinary tour guide, journalist, and food activist with more than 30 years of experience in the local and international food, travel, and public health arenas.

Annie has built her life and career around her passion for food, wine, and travel. For nearly three decades, she has worked in the international public health field and as a chef, magazine editor, television and radio show host and guest, food stylist, television producer, speaker, and consultant. Annie recently returned to Boston after four years traveling around the world teaching cooking classes and leading culinary tours in exotic locales. She currently works as a culinary instructor; program manager; freelance food, wine, and travel writer; restaurant consultant; and radio program host (WBZ AM1030 “Connoisseur’s Corner”).

LAURIE DONNELLY

Multiple Emmy, James Beard, and Peabody Award-winning Executive Producer Laurie Donnelly has been guiding content for some of public television’s most beloved lifestyle programs for over 29 years. 

As the Director of Lifestyle programming, along with her involvement as Executive Producer for WGBH’s Studio 6, Laurie oversees a broad array of projects, from the Emmy award winning series, Victory Garden's Edible Feast and The Mind of a Chef, to the recent Broadway or Bust. Laurie’s impressive resume also includes her work with the Emmy-nominated Moveable Feast with Fine Cooking Magazine, the award-winning series Gourmet's Adventures with Ruth and Gourmet's Diary of a Foodie; Simply Ming; Lidia Celebrates America; Rough Cut: Woodworking with Tommy Mac; and Sacred Journeys with Bruce Feiler.

Laurie continues her impressive leadership in contemporary, innovative content through several new series and specials which include:  recently released I’ll Have What Phil Is Having with Host Phil Rosenthal (creator of Everybody Loves Raymond); the latest Lidia Celebrates Holiday Special: Home for The Holidays; and RARE (Targeted for Early Spring 2017).

Laurie has a master’s degree from Boston University. She was awarded a four-year graduate fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health and is recognized by Boston University as a Distinguished Alumni. 

Sarah Downer

Sarah Downer is the Associate Director of the Center for Health Law & Policy Innovation and directs the Whole Person Care initiative, which seeks to improve care for underserved individuals at every point of interaction with the health care system. She works with clients and partners to nurture innovations in health care delivery and financing, scale successful interventions, convene powerful coalitions, translate emerging research into comprehensive and compelling resources for policy-makers, and to explore the short and long-term implications of health care trends. Along with the Boston-based nonprofit Community Servings, she convenes and leads the Food is Medicine Massachusetts Coalition, and is a primary author of the Massachusetts Food is Medicine State Plan, a blueprint for increasing access to vital nutrition services for every community in the Commonwealth. Ms. Downer also leads the Center’s Social Determinants of Health Law Lab, a special project dedicated to analyzing novel legal issues that arise when the health care system interacts with patients in new ways. Ms. Downer has a BA from Harvard College and JD from Harvard Law School.

BEN ELLIOT

As Chef, Farmer and Owner of Saltbox Farm, Saltbox Kitchen and Saltbox Catering, Ben oversees all elements of the farm-to-table journey – playing an active daily role in planting, harvesting, preparing and serving his cuisine. 

Prior to Saltbox Kitchen, Ben's 20 year career includes time spent at La Folie and the Fifth Floor under Chef Laurant Gras in San Francisco and Locke-Ober in Boston. His most recent restaurant post was with chef Barbara Lynch in Boston as Chef de Cuisine at No.9 Park, opening Lynch’s demonstration kitchen Stir, and launching Lynch’s catering company 9 at Home as Chef de Cuisine.  In addition to fine dining, Ben also worked with some of the area’s most well-known gourmet shops, Hi-Rise Bakery and Formaggio Kitchen, which influences the quality of the prepared foods at Saltbox Kitchen.

A native of Wayland, MA, Ben has called Saltbox Farm and Concord, MA home since 2004.  Before moving to the farm, Ben spent summers tending to it alongside his grandparents, the original owners.  Ben attended Hartwick College in New York, where he met his wife Julia. He and Julia have 2 children, Sam and Maggie. When he's not in the kitchen, Ben enjoys a good mai tai, greasy Chinese food, and setting off fireworks. 

ANNE FISHEL

Anne Fishel, Ph.D. is a family therapist, clinical psychologist, and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School. She is Director of the Family and Couple Therapy Program at Massachusetts General Hospital, where she trains child psychiatry residents and psychology interns in family therapy. 

Dr. Fishel is also Executive Director and co-founder of The Family Dinner Project, a non-profit group based at MGH’s Psychiatry Academy, that helps families on-line and in communities to have better and more frequent family dinners. She lectures widely at academic conferences and to parent and teacher workshops.  

She is the author of 3 books: A Life-Cycle Approach to Treating Couples: From Dating to Death (Momentum Press, 2018); Home for Dinner: Mixing Food, Fun, and Conversation for a Happier Family and Healthier Kids (Harper Collins, 2015); Treating the Adolescent in Family Therapy: A Developmental and Narrative Approach (Rowman and Littlefield, 1999) and the co-author of Eat, Laugh, Talk: The Family Dinner Playbook (Familius, October 1, 2019)

MICHAEL FLOREAK

Michael Floreak is a food writer and brand strategist who lives and often eats in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His interviews with authors, chefs, writers and characters from across the food world appear regularly in The Boston Globe and To Market. He recently completed his Masters of Arts in Gastronomy from Boston University. Find him on Twitter @floreak.