Nadine Naber, PhD, doesn't sit on the sidelines. She is an advocate/activist and award winning professor who has the data and stories to back up her work supporting diverse people in companies and communities.
Candace Doby knows that life is too short to play games with your potential. She has spoken to 100K+ people about how to own your brilliance at work - transforming employees into more confident, empowered, and productive people.
Dr. Deirdre Cooper Owens is an award winning author and a historian most known for her writings on slavery and the history of reproductive medicine. She is also widely known for capturing the history of Harriet Tubman as a disabled woman and how it relates to DEI.
James Beard Award Winner (2022), Alan Bergo is The Forager Chef – a wild hunter of plants. Most recently seen on Hulu’s “Chefs vs Wild,” his understanding of plants and flavors teaches us about innovation, nature, food, and our humanity.
Past Speaking Engagements
Speaking options
The Grocery Store Outside
This talk is ideal for those interested in farming/growing, including restaurants/bars
There is a world of food at our fingertips that we overlook and take for granted on a daily basis. With our current food system relying on conventional agriculture, we need to look at every angle we can if we’re ever going to attempt to feed more people with less inputs. A byproduct of searching for the finest ingredients for his restaurants was that Alan discovered the virility and extreme volume with which some particular plants grow, plants that are at our fingertips, and under our feet. We harvest corn and soy, but what if there were products we could harvest up to six times a year? It’s possible, and you don’t need a hobby farm to try out Alan’s ideas! A wide variety of people and organizations: community gardens, small farms, vegetable growers, restaurants/bars, thrifty eaters, vegetarians, and locavores will find great takeaways in this talk.
Foraging Forward: Innovation for the Food Industry
This talk is ideal for culinary professionals including culinary students, chefs, and the food service industry
The culinary world devours new ingredients. Obtaining those that others can’t easily locate is a competitive advantage for chefs and restaurants. Alan (the “Forager Chef”) takes you on a journey into the cutting edge of the culinary world—literally the final frontier of ingredients that he, a handful of chefs, and wild food authors are shedding light on including wild herbs, like kinome and galium, extremely obscure vegetables, like angelica and cow parsnip blossoms, hyper seasonal parts of plants we never knew we could eat, like the shoots of squash, unripe pumpkins, and young elm seeds, and a legion of leafy green plants history has forgotten. Alan shares stories of how he began to forage and the processes he went through serving his unique finds in restaurants. He shares the challenges, including sourcing, the cycle of wild food harvesters that inhibit chef access, and how we might break those cycles to share these things with the world. (That is a picture of Chef Alan Bergo – left – on Hulu’s Chefs vs. Wild – Picture courtesy of Hulu.)
Consulting: Corporations & Restaurants
Alan, a well-trained chef who specializes in the bounty of foraged foods, is available for consulting also. Fill out the form below to inquire.
“We booked Chef Alan Bergo speak at American Culinary Federation’s 2022 National Convention in Las Vegas and it was such a cool learning experience. Chef Bergo was so knowledgeable and passionate and it was a joy to work with him as he was very well prepared. You can definitely feel his passion and his presentation was brought to life with beautiful photos and a tasting, while we all learned about foraging wild foods. Our convention room had close to 1000 chefs in attendance who are all culinary experts, and we’ve received great feedback that attendees, and how they are now very inspired to find ways that they can now incorporate foraged ingredients into their restaurants! We learned so much about foraging…… and the ingredients that are growing in our backyards!” – Jacqui Pressinger, Director of Strategic Partnerships, American Culinary Federation
“Alan is a dynamic and engaging speaker. Well organized and high-interest PowerPoint too. Alan was also incredibly generous with his time at the book signing.” – Amy Alpine, Chippewa Valley Book Festival
“Alan is my Yoda. He taught me everything I know about the kitchen, and the wild.” – Jeremy Bechtold, Executive Chef: The Happy Gnome, St. Paul MN
“Few chefs have the sort of culinary and field experience Alan does.” – Samuel Thayer, Founder of Foragers Harvest and Wildwood Products. Author of The Forager’s Harvest, Nature’s Garden, and Incredible Wild Edibles
“When the Minnesota Department of Health and Minnesota Department of Agriculture asked me to sit on a task force to help author the statewide certification class for wild mushroom foragers, sellers and buyers, my first call after accepting that appointment was to Alan. I asked him to join me on the task force since I felt his superior knowledge would be valuable to the process. He didn’t disappoint.” – Chef Leonard P. Russo, Seven-time James Beard Nominee and Former Executive Chef/Owner of Heartland Restaurant, St Paul, MN Author of Heartland: Farm Forward Dishes from the Great Midwest
About Alan
James Beard Award Winner, (2022), Alan Bergo, is the Forager Chef, a leading authority on culinary uses of mushrooms and plants. Thousands follow his work at Forager | Chef – a website dedicated to wild food seasonal cooking and kitchen industry life – for tips on how to maximize what is available to us via the woods (and our backyards, too). The website started as a journal and evolved into a mycelium-like network of wild food authorities and mushroom hunters from around the world.
A Midwestern native, Alan worked for 10 years under Italian chefs and then served as sous chef to Lenny Russo at St. Paul’s 7-time James Beard nominee Heartland. He led two restaurants as executive chef of the Salt Cellar and then at farm to table cornerstone Lucia’s in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is a consultant on everything from foraging for unique restaurant menus to how mushrooms can be used for wild things like grain-free starch fabrication and even as a condiment.
Alan’s work has been featured in various print and visual media, including REI Coop, The Today Show, FOX, The Daily Beast, Heirloom Gardener, Experience Life Magazine, The Growler, The Heavy Table, Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine, and Women’s Health. 2021 book titled “Forager Chef: Flora” is a study in rare and forgotten plants, herbs, vegetables, and culinary techniques is already in its 4th print run! In 2022, Alan won the James Beard Award for Instructional Visual Media for his online show, The Wild Harvest. You can see Alan in Season 1, Episode 2 of Hulu’s new show “Chef vs Wild” (2022).
Who Caught Your Eye?
Melibee Global Speakers is a boutique speaker booking agency, laser-focused on the needs of event professionals in any industry or field seeking to book diverse keynote speakers and corporate edutainment. Our mission is to provide an easy, customer-friendly, efficient and trusted talent booking experience.
Inquire about booking MelibeeGlobal speaker, Alan Bergo using the form below.
Jennifer Hamady empowers authentic and empowered voices in corporate teams. She specializes in DEI and developing leadership across various types of organizations.
Eleven food books, a Southern upbringing, and a sociology degree make Ashley English who she is; a food personality with a unique perspective.
Speaking Options
No Taste Like Home
In this talk, author Ashley explores telling your personal culinary experiences and journey through your cookbook or menu. Using examples (and tastings when possible!) from her book Southern From Scratch, which showcases how her culinary upbringing informed and shaped the cook she am today. She’ll discuss ways to imbue dishes with both literal and figurative, personal flavor.
So You Want To Write A Book?
Ashley guides you on the journey of creating a book concept, pitching it, working with agents versus being unaffiliated, recipe development and testing (where relevant), and more. She’s learned many helpful steps to catching an editor’s attention along her 11 book journey and she generously shares what insider tips have stuck, and what hasn’t, along the way.
Recipe Development (aka: What’s Your Flavor?)
Ashley invites you to more deeply explore the process of recipe writing. Having authored 11 food-based books, she’s learned quite a few tips and tricks for crafting recipes that are original yet personal, innovative yet familiar. This talk is geared not just for those interested in writing cookbooks of their own, but also for getting out of “safe” culinary ruts.
Breaking Bread
For centuries, people bonded over food—building long-term relationships based on a need to collaborate in order to grow, harvest, and preserve food. Today, the easy access to food has eliminated the need for those relationships, leaving us with one less reason to interact. In this talk, Ashley discusses how eating together has the power to create scientifically proven social bonds, engender community preservation, and serve as a form of diplomacy.
Using Food as a Catalyst for Memoir Style Writing
This talk is ideal for those food professionals that enjoy writing as much as they enjoy cooking. We’ll discuss ideas for creating and nurturing food-based first person essays, articles, blog posts, and more, and ways to get out of food-writing ruts.
“In a time when origin and heritage are finally enjoying the culinary spotlight, Ashley English emerges from the sweet hollars of Southern Appalachia as an honest and refreshing voice. You’ll find no truer heart and account of what it means to reject, embrace, interpret and celebrate the kitchen we come from. As a mountain girl myself and working in the TV food industry, I see many iterations of this new brand of home cook, but y’all, take notice — Ms. English is the real deal.” – Selena Lauterer, President, Artemis Independent
“As one of the leading local voices on food, Ashley combines a unique message with a relaxed stage presence and an articulate delivery of her thoughts. She is both charming and informative. She attracted a big crowd as the keynote speaker for one of our events in 2018 and wowed the audience with ground-breaking thoughts on our relationship with food. Can’t wait to have her back for an encore!” – Tennille Tracy, Publisher, Edible Asheville
About Ashley
Ashley English is the author of 11 books, including all 5 books in her “Homemade Living series” (Canning & Preserving, Keeping Chickens, Keeping Bees, Home Dairy, and Home Apothecary), as well as A Year of Pies, Quench, Handmade Gatherings, A Year Of Picnics, The Essential Book of Homesteading, and Southern From Scratch.
She has worked over the years with a number of nonprofit organizations committed to social and agricultural issues, hosted a bimonthly column for several years in the popular blog Design*Sponge entitled “Small Measures with Ashley,” is an ongoing contributor to the quarterly publication “Taproot,” and regularly contributes to a number of international, national, and regional print publications. She has been a frequent guest on Martha Stewart Radio on SiriusFM.
She regularly teaches classes on topics such as chicken-keeping, bee-keeping, canning & preserving, pie-making, creating dairy products, making homemade health & body care items, and crafting homemade beverages.
She holds degrees in holistic nutrition and sociology, and is an alumnus of both The University of North Carolina at Asheville and Clayton College of Natural Health. She lives in Candler, NC with her husband Glenn, their young sons Huxley and Alistair, and a menagerie of animals. You can follow along with Ashley’s writings at Small Measure.
Who Caught Your Eye?
Melibee Global Speakers is a boutique speaker booking agency, laser-focused on the needs of event professionals in any industry or field seeking to book diverse keynote speakers and corporate edutainment. Our mission is to provide an easy, customer-friendly, efficient and trusted talent booking experience.
Inquire about booking MelibeeGlobal speaker, Ashley English, using the form below.
This talk is ideal for those interested in farming/growing, including restaurants/bars
This talk is ideal for culinary professionals including culinary students, chefs, and the food service industry
Alan’s segment is the latter half of a story on Blue Zones. Click to view the full Today Show video.
James Beard Award Winner, (2022), Alan Bergo, is the Forager Chef, a leading authority on culinary uses of mushrooms and plants. Thousands follow his work at Forager | Chef – a website dedicated to wild food seasonal cooking and kitchen industry life – for tips on how to maximize what is available to us via the woods (and our backyards, too). The website started as a journal and evolved into a mycelium-like network of wild food authorities and mushroom hunters from around the world.
In this talk, author Ashley explores telling your personal culinary experiences and journey through your cookbook or menu. Using examples (and tastings when possible!) from her book Southern From Scratch, which showcases how her culinary upbringing informed and shaped the cook she am today. She’ll discuss ways to imbue dishes with both literal and figurative, personal flavor. 
Ashley guides you on the journey of creating a book concept, pitching it, working with agents versus being unaffiliated, recipe development and testing (where relevant), and more. She’s learned many helpful steps to catching an editor’s attention along her 11 book journey and she generously shares what insider tips have stuck, and what hasn’t, along the way. 
Ashley invites you to more deeply explore the process of recipe writing. Having authored 11 food-based books, she’s learned quite a few tips and tricks for crafting recipes that are original yet personal, innovative yet familiar. This talk is geared not just for those interested in writing cookbooks of their own, but also for getting out of “safe” culinary ruts. 
For centuries, people bonded over food—building long-term relationships based on a need to collaborate in order to grow, harvest, and preserve food. Today, the easy access to food has eliminated the need for those relationships, leaving us with one less reason to interact. In this talk, Ashley discusses how eating together has the power to create scientifically proven social bonds, engender community preservation, and serve as a form of diplomacy.
This talk is ideal for those food professionals that enjoy writing as much as they enjoy cooking. We’ll discuss ideas for creating and nurturing food-based first person essays, articles, blog posts, and more, and ways to get out of food-writing ruts.
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