Chef, Executive Producer, Food & Wine; Washington, DC

Kwame Onwuachi ’13 is a James Beard Award-winning chef, who currently serves as Food & Wine's executive producer. In this recently appointed role, Kwame collaborated on big brand moments and events including the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, CO and "The Family Reunion: Presented by Kwame Onwuachi" in Middleburg, VA. He is the author of the upcoming My America: Recipes from a Young Black Chef: A Cookbook and Notes from a Young Black Chef. He was born on Long Island and raised in New York City, Nigeria, and Louisiana. Kwame was first exposed to cooking by his mother, in the family’s modest Bronx apartment, and he took that spark of passion and turned it into a career. From toiling in the bowels of oil cleanup ships to working at some of the best restaurants in the world, he has seen and lived his fair share of diversity. Kwame trained at The Culinary Institute of America and opened five restaurants before turning thirty including the groundbreaking Afro-Caribbean restaurant, Kith/Kin. A former Top Chef contestant, he has been named one of Food & Wine’s Best New Chefs, Esquire Magazine’s 2019 Chef of the Year, and a 30 Under 30 honoree by both Zagat and Forbes. @chefkwameonwuachi

(Photo Credit: Scott Suchman)