FOOD BUSINESS SCHOOL - Key Persons

Golden's career spans different categories and industries from CPG to nonprofit to direct agency work. Prior to starting Nourishing Growth she was the vice president of marketing and innovation for organic superfood company Navitas Organics, where she oversaw new product development, brand design, and managed a portfolio of 60+ products in multiple categories. Prior to Navitas she was at Clif Bar & Company, during some of their highest growth years, developing compelling 360° consumer marketing campaigns across grassroots, social media, online, event, and high-reach platforms. Professor Golden started her career at renowned agency Fallon, where she worked on campaigns for United Airlines and BMW.

In addition to teaching at the Culinary Institute of America, Scott Alves Barton, PhD is a faculty fellow in race and resilience in Notre Dame's Institute of Advanced Studies, an assistant adjunct at New York University, and other area universities. He holds a PhD in food studies from NYU. He had a 25-year career as an executive chef, restaurant and product development consultant, and culinary educator. Scott is on the board of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, is secretary of the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition, is a steering committee member for the James Beard Awards, and co-chair of the African Diaspora Religions Unit for the American Academy of Religion. Scott has been a public foodways scholar at Lynden Sculpture Garden, Milwaukee, WI. His research and publications focus on the intersection of secular and sacred cuisine as a marker of identity politics, cultural heritage, political resistance, and self-determination in Northeastern Brazil, and the 19th-20th century USA. Scott's home is in Harlem, New York City.

Kyleigh Wawak works in a most unlikely place for a food innovation professional-a tech company! She works for Salesforce as a member of Ignite, an innovation consulting team that partners with Salesforce's most valued customers to transform their futures. Like many innovation professionals, her background is varied and her career path winding, beginning with an undergraduate degree in accounting that led to a mind-numbing desk job that served as a wake-up call: follow your passion! Ms. Wawak's own passion led to culinary school at Kendall College in Chicago and working as a consultant for a variety of food companies before landing at gravitytank, a design-led innovation consultancy. It was there that Ms. Wawak and her colleagues developed the practice of Food Experience Design-a holistic, user-centered approach to food innovation that goes way beyond the product and packaging to consider all aspects of the ecosystem as opportunities for innovation. She has worked for companies like Pepsico, Quaker, Mondelez, Hormel, and AB InBev to reinvigorate brands, address new markets, and launch new products. Kyleigh Wawak believes design thinking is a powerful tool to solve all kinds of problems, big and small, and is something that everyone can do, not just designers or innovation professionals. She lives in London with her husband and Persian cat Sheila, and in her spare time you can find her cooking up a storm, perfecting her downward dog, and getting lost in narrow streets throughout Europe.

Job Titles:

• Industry - Leading Expert

Phil Colicchio's career in the restaurant industry is a testament to the power of building strong relationships. He found his way to the business in the early 1990s, when he was working as an attorney at a white-shoe law firm. His cousin, the chef Tom Colicchio-yes, that one, but not quite a celebrity yet-sought his legal advice, and Phil happily obliged. He helped Tom develop "an intelligent model" for a restaurant business, as he described it, one that deftly navigated the intersection of commercial real estate, employment, intellectual property, and media law. Colicchio may not have known it yet, but his ability to navigate this particular intersection would prove quite valuable. As Tom's star rose, he passed Phil's name along to his colleagues. Soon enough, Phil found himself working with a litany of chefs, restaurateurs, and other industry professionals at a crucial moment in restaurant history. "It was before anyone had ever heard of celebrity chefs," he recalled. "The Food Network had not yet been created. There was no such thing as Beat Bobby Flay, there was no Top Chef. All of this was going on right at the time that chefs were coming into their own as independent personalities." Then came the Las Vegas restaurant boom of the early 2000s, when Colicchio's expertise attracted clients in the hotel and real estate development industries. This clientele continued expanding as hotels went through their own transformation, leaning on third-party food and beverage providers to distinguish themselves from the competition. In 2008 he founded his own consultancy, Colicchio Consulting ("very creative," he quipped), to curate thoughtful food and beverage programming across a diversity of markets. The firm was eventually acquired by Cushman & Wakefield, under whose umbrella it operates today. In short: Colicchio brings more than a little experience to his work as an instructor in the Culinary Institute of America's prestigious master's in Food Business program. Phil Colicchio is an industry-leading expert in specialty food, beverage and entertainment procurement. In his current role at Cushman & Wakefield, Phil provides his expertise to developers, owners, investors, hoteliers, resort and university clients around the country. His deep relationships within both the F&B and entertainment communities serve as the currency that sets them apart in the era of newCommerce, and aid brokers as he assists clients in strategically building standout concepts for their projects. Phil occupies a unique space in the worlds of hospitality, mixed use development, law and education. As a New York-based attorney with Taylor Colicchio, LLP, Phil represented more than fifty James Beard Foundation Award winning Chefs, Restaurateurs, Beverage and Service Professionals, Restaurant Designers and Authors. As the Las Vegas mega-restaurant era evolved, both the renowned chef and hotel communities turned to Phil to assist in structuring and negotiating long-term management and licensing contracts. Over the last several years, Phil turned his experience and business acumen toward the interests of the mixed use, retail, education and hotel development sectors, where he consults on the identification, selection, negotiation and engagement of elevated food and beverage operations. Phil also advises professional and collegiate sports venue operators and large scale music festival promoters on strategies geared toward elevating the food and beverage experiences for all levels of clientele. Since 2015, Phil has been at the forefront of "The Food Hall Movement," advising property owners and universities on the critical need for intelligently programming communal spaces to include authentic food and beverage offerings, markets, beer gardens, rooftop experiences and thoughtfully curated Food Halls. Founded in 2008, his Colicchio Consulting, LLC expanded in 2017 to include the development of intimate venues to meet the demand for experiencing live performance in familiar retail, hotel and Food Hall environments. Phil maintains faculty status at the CIA's Master in Professional Studies programs in Hyde Park, NY and Napa, CA, and is a member of the CIA's School of Business and Management Studies' Advisory Council. He is also a member of the Auburn University Hotel and Restaurant Management Program Advisory Board in Auburn AL. Phil speaks regularly at industry events on the impact of curated food and beverage programming on real estate development and place making. He is a graduate of Seton Hall University and Villanova Law School.