“Boss Queen” Jill Conner Browne conceived of and founded the Sweet Potato Queens® in the early 1980s. After passing through a patch of the doldrums, she found herself in need of some excitement, and a new direction. Jill discovered that she lived near Vardaman, Mississippi, self- proclaimed Sweet Potato Capital of the World, and inspiration struck—she volunteered to be the queen for the farmers’ annual festival.
Prof. Richard Campanella, geographer and associate dean for research with the Tulane School of Architecture and holder of the Jean and Saul A. Mintz Professorship, is the author of fifteen books and 300 articles on New Orleans and Louisiana geography, history, urbanism, and related topics.
Geraldine Brooks is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel March and the international bestsellers The Secret Chord, Caleb’s Crossing, People of the Book, and Year of Wonders (recently optioned by Olivia Colman). She has also written the acclaimed nonfiction works Nine Parts of Desire and Foreign Correspondence. Brooks started out as a reporter in her hometown, Sydney, and went on to cover conflicts as a Wall Street Journal correspondent in Bosnia, Somalia, and the Middle East.
Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He has received seven honorary doctorates in American Studies. He works in many capacities in the world of public history, including for boards, museums, colleges and historical societies. Six of his books were named New York Times “Notable Books of the Year” and seven became New York Times bestsellers.
Tyler Bridges, twice a member of Pulitzer Prize-winning teams, is a journalist based in New Orleans who reports on Louisiana politics for the Baton Rouge/New Orleans Advocate, and has also written for the Washington Post, Politico Magazine and other publications.
David Rae Morris was born in Oxford, England and grew up in New York City. He holds a B.A. from Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, in 1982, and an M.A. In Journalism and Mass Communication from the University of Minnesota in 1991. His photographs have been published in National Geographic, Time Magazine, Newsweek, USA Today, New York Times, Utne Reader, The Nation, as well as the Angolite, the official Magazine of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, and Love And Rage, a national anarchist weekly.
Katy Morlas Shannon is a tenth-generation Louisiana native. She received her master’s degree in History from Louisiana State University in 2005. She has dedicated her career as a professional historian to uncovering the stories of enslaved people. She was instrumental in the early stages of research for Whitney Plantation and created a searchable online database of over 400 enslaved individuals at Evergreen Plantation along with biographies of enslaved people for the plantation's website.
Froswa’ Booker-Drew, Ph.D. is a Network Weaver who believes relationships are the key to our personal, professional, and organizational growth. She has been quoted/featured in Forbes, Ozy, Bustle, Huffington Post, Modern Luxury, and other media outlets, due to an extensive background in leadership, nonprofit management, philanthropy, partnership development, training, and education.
Neal Bodenheimer is the Managing Partner of CureCo, the acclaimed group behind Cure, Cane & Table, and VALS in New Orleans; Partner of Dauphine’s in Washington, DC; and Operator of newly opened Peychaud’s at the hotel Maison de Ville.
Roy Blount Jr. is the author of Alphabet Juice, Alphabetter Juice (or The Joy of Text), Save Room for Pie, Be Sweet, and twenty other books whose subjects include the movie Duck Soup ("delightfully erudite"-- Times), the 70s Pittsburgh Steelers ("Deserves a place on the short shelf of the cracked masterpieces of New Journalism" -- Dwight Garner in the Times), and Robert E. Lee ("A miniature masterpiece" -- Bookpage).
