Chef Nisar Tantray

After graduating from university of Kashmir in 1986, Chef Nisar went for 3 years diploma in hotel management and catering technology from National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology, New Delhi Started his professional career as a chef trainee for 2 years in the year 1989 with a 5 Star Hotel in India and on completion of 2 years training programme was regularized as a junior sous chef.

In his last 19 years of professional career span he worked as Sr. Sous Chef for Luxury Collection Starwood Hotels, Executive/ Head Chef for High profile international sports events like Doha Asian Games 2006 and TAJ SATS - world class air catering by TAJ GROUP OF HOTELS, Executive chef for two five star hotels and presently working as executive chef in UAE.

Randy Caparoso

 Randy Caparoso is a Denver based restaurant wine consultant and journalist who has devoted himself to a career managing, judging, speaking about and even producing wine since 1978. As a restaurant professional, Caparoso is best known as a Founding Partner of the Roy’s restaurant group, opening over twenty-five of these restaurants from Hawaii to New York between 1988 and 2001. As Roy’s former Corporate Wine Director, he was Santé magazine’s first “Wine & Spirits Professional of the Year” (1998), and was twice named Restaurant Wine’s “Wine Marketer of the Year (1993 & 1999).

Carol Penn-Romine  

Los Angeles-based Carol Penn-Romine grew up on a farm in Tennessee, where she developed an early understanding of and appreciation for livestock as fellow inhabitants of the farm-and ultimately as dinner.

After working as a journalist and editor for a number of years, she decided to focus her writing on food, and to that end, earned a degree from the California School of Culinary Arts. She is particularly interested in the social and cultural aspects of food and how its production, preparation and enjoyment bring people together.

Tracy Laswell Williams

Tracy Laswell Valdez is a Job Transition Coach and an accredited, award-winning, nationally published Resume Writer. She founded her company CAREER-Magic.com in 1994, and has since served thousands of individual job seekers. Sought out by career journalists around the nation, she has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal and The Denver Post, among others.

Ron Yudd

Ron Yudd has been President of Points of Profit Leadership Inc. since 1990. He is a recognized expert on developing profit strategies and customer service solutions. Ron provides his clients with the tools for success. He accomplishes this through speaking, seminars, workshops, facilitation, consulting and personal coaching and mentoring.

Lee Simon

Graduate of Cornell University's School of Hospitality Administration with a concentration in foodservice and hospitality design. He uses his operational experience on a daily basis to assist with the planning of new and renovated foodservice facilities. His past projects, located domestically and abroad, include all types of foodservice operations.

Chef Jos Wellman (aka Tallyrand)

Born in the UK and initially raised in my father’s hometown in Wales, I consider myself a Welshman through and through. Although, with my father in both the Royal and Merchant Navies and later in the Police force we travelled quite a lot as a child, which seems to have given me itchy feet for the rest of my life and a passion for travel as you will see. I guess you could say I am now a displaced Welshman, an adopted Kiwi and a citizen of the world.

Chef Instructor Collen Engle, CSC

Chef Engle is a full time teacher at the National Center for Hospitality Studies at Sullivan University. He teaches Sanitation, Nutrition, Purchasing, and Advanced Culinary Techniques.