SFA Board of Directors
If you would like to get in touch with a SFA board member, please email sfadesk@olemiss.edu and we will help get you in contact.
Linton Hopkins, SFA Board President, is chef and co-owner, with his wife Gina, of Restaurant Eugene and Holeman & Finch Public House in Atlanta. A native of Atlanta, he is a graduate of Emory University and the Culinary Institute of America. He co-founded the Peachtree Road Farmer’s Market in Atlanta, as well as the first organic garden in a public elementary school in Georgia. He has a passion for local farming, pickling, preserving, and anything to do with pork and salt.
Sara Roahen, SFA board vice-president, is a Wisconsin native who graduated from St. John’s College in Santa Fe, New Mexico. For the next six years she applied her liberal arts degree as a line cook in restaurants across Wisconsin, California, and Wyoming. In 2000, she migrated to New Orleans, where she reviewed restaurants for Gambit, the weekly newspaper. Her New Orleans food studies eventually led her to write a book: Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table, published by W.W. Norton for Mardi Gras 2008. She also co-edited The Southern Foodways Alliance Community Cookbook, published by UGA Press in October 2010.
Brett Anderson is the restaurant critic and a feature writer at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. His writing has appeared in Gourmet, the Washington Post, Oxford American, Food & Wine, and Salon. His work has also been published in three editions of Best Food Writing and three of Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing. He's won ten writing awards from the Association of Food Journalists and a James Beard Foundation Journalism Award for newspaper feature writing.
Bill Andrews, a graduate of the University of Mississippi and disciple of tailgating in the Grove, serves as Director of Marketing Communications for Viking Range Corporation. A former banker who traded a career in debits and credits for the love of oil and vinegar, Bill is married to Lisa Marshall, formerly of Mason, Tennessee, home to Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken.
John Currence, a native of New Orleans, began cooking in the mid 1980s in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, under the tutelage of Bill Neal at Crooks Corner. In 1992, John opened City Grocery, on the square in Oxford, Mississippi. In succeeding years Currence has opened a scree of other restaurants, including Bouré, Big Bad Breakfast, and Snackbar. In 2009, he was awarded Best Chef: South from the James Beard Foundation. He’s helped found Oxford’s farmers’ market, and he is past president of the Mississippi Restaurant Association and Oxford’s local arts council. During the 18 months following Hurricane Katrina, John led the rebuilding of Willie Mae's Scotch House in the Tremé neighborhood of New Orleans.
Lolis Elie, a native of New Orleans, is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and Columbia University. He was one of the 50 founders of the SFA. A columnist for the Times-Picayune, Elie is the author of Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country. He edited Cornbread Nation Two: The United States of Barbecue.
Makalé Faber-Cullen is the Chief Lorista at LORE tools.ornaments.provisions., a research-based presenter of living occupational cultures and boutique retailer in New York City. Prior to leading Lore, she was the Director of Programs at Slow Food USA where she launched three national programs documenting North American agricultural diversity and supporting small artisan food producers in getting their products to market. She cut her teeth at CityLore and the Smithsonian but doesn’t bite. Makalé (MA-ka-lay) was a Commonwealth Fellow at UVA for doctoral studies in Cultural Anthropology and has studied art at Parsons and The Torpedo Factory.
Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood. He began his career with the long-running television show Cheers. He currently has a number of network television projects in development and is producing a film set in Mumbai, India. Rob has authored two books, is a contributing editor to the National Review and the Los Angeles Times, and writes occasionally for the Wall Street Journal and the BBC Radio Times. His weekly radio commentary, "Martini Shot," may be heard on public radio in Los Angeles or on iTunes.
Dean McCord, a native of Pennsylvania, earned a doctorate in Molecular and Cellular Pathology at the University of North Carolina. He then sneaked off to Wisconsin for law school, but returned to the South to reside in Raleigh with his wife, Marcella, and his four school-aged children (who have yet to be convinced that okra is a good thing.) He is a health care attorney and maintains a food blog that focuses on his family and local issues. He also has served on several non-profit boards and is the chair of a children's mental health organization.
Jay Oglesby is 15-year banking industry veteran, who manages a half-billion dollar loan portfolio for Wells Fargo, the second largest financial services company in the United States. He is a graduate of the University of Mississippi, where he earned undergraduate degrees in Journalism and English. He also earned MBA and Masters of International Management degrees from the Thunderbird School of Global Management. Born in Columbus, Mississippi, Oglesby now lives in metropolitan Birmingham, Alabama, where he has served as the Southeastern US representative on Wells Fargo's Commercial Real Estate Diversity Council and now serves as Vice Chair of the City of Homewood, Alabama's Historic Preservation Commission.
Ted Ownby is director for the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. He holds a joint appointment in History and Southern Studies. He earned his B.A. from Vanderbilt University, and an M.A. and doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998 and Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920. He is the coeditor of the Mississippi Encyclopedia and writes and teaches classes on the social and cultural history of the American South.
Harry Root is co-founder and principal of Grassroots Wine. Based in Charleston, South Carolina, with an additional office in Birmingham,Alabama, Grassroots Wine represents place-driven winegrowers from every major wine region on the planet. A native of Tampa, Florida, who received a degree in Natural Resource from the University of the South, Root first became active in the SFA during the SFA’s Charleston Field Trip in 2007. In concert with Whole Foods and Hirsch Vineyards, he led a 2010 effort that raised dollars for SFA documentary efforts by way of a special Southbound Cuvee bottling.
Bill Smith is a native of North Carolina and has worked as a chef for more than two decades, most recently at Crook's Corner in Chapel Hill. In 2009 and 2010, the James Beard Foundation named him a finalist for Best Chef: South. He is the author of Seasoned in the South: Recipes from Crook's Corner and from Home. His latest writing topic is Immigrants in the Kitchen, inspired by his trips to Celaya, Mexico, to visit former staff who have returned home. In 2007 he served as a host of Camp Carolina, where he served SFA folk a family-style supper of fried chicken and summer vegetables.
Pardis Stitt, born and raised by Iranian immigrant parents, was one of the fifty founders of the SFA. She directed lunch service at the SFA's first symposium. Over the ensuing years, she has returned again and again to SFA events. Pardis is a founder of Slow Food Birmingham. She has served on a number of charitable foundation boards. Her paying gig is managing front-of-the-house operations for the three Birmingham restaurants that she co-owns with husband, Frank Stitt: Highlands Bar and Grill, Bottega, and Chez Fon Fon.
