CORE TEAM

Geoffrey Drummond is Executive Director of The Food Lab at SUNY Stony Brook/Southampton. He is a producer/director of culinary programs for television and digital media applications. Over a 40 year career in film and television, Geof was president of Saga Productions (producer of the cult classic My Dinner with Andre) and president of A La Carte Communications, where he produced and collaborated with Julia Child, helping to bring food and cooking television to generations of culinary fans. Geof also created/produced food series for TV starring Lidia Bastianich, Jacques Pépin, Martin Yan, The Frugal Gourmet, America’s Test Kitchen, Eric Ripert and numerous others. Geof is the recipient of ten National Emmy Awards and more than a dozen James Beard Awards. A graduate of Cornell University and (graduate school at) Stanford University, he is a member of the Smithsonian Institute Kitchen Cabinet, has served as a member of the City Harvest Food Council, and on the boards of the Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital and the American Institute of Food and Wine.

Judiann Carmack-Fayyaz is a USDA award-winning high school and university educator specializing in Agriculture, Food Education and Technology. Skilled at creating programs for career readiness, Judiann works to close the skills gap so people in transition can pursue the in-demand jobs of a changing economy and create new opportunities for themselves.

A strong advocate for universal access to good, clean, and fair food, Judiann has held leadership positions in Slow Food East End (Chair) and Slow Food USA (NY State Slow Food Governor) and co-founded the Edible School Gardens network. Judiann holds university degrees in Educational Leadership, Agriculture, and French and has served as a Work-Based Learning and Career and Technical Education Coordinator. She is currently working with Stony Brook University’s FoodLab as the Program Director.

Robert Reeves is the Associate Provost of Southampton Graduate Arts Campus, where he leads the development and expansion of graduate education in Creative Writing, Theatre, and Film. He has recruited a nationally prominent faculty of creative artists to Stony Brook Southampton, while establishing a graduate presence at Stony Brook Manhattan, as well as international programs. He is also the founding publisher of TSR: The Southampton Review, an award-winning national literary and arts journal, and the author of two critically acclaimed novels, as well as screenplays, short fiction, essays, and literary criticism. Reeves taught at Harvard and Princeton prior to joining Stony Brook University 2006 as an Associate Professor of English.

Kathleen Russo produces the podcast/radio show Here’s The Thing with Alec Baldwin (a Stony Brook/Southampton and WNYC production). Past credits include: two movies with academy award winning director Steven Soderbergh (Gray’s Anatomy, And Everything Is Going Fine) and an Obie-award winning play called Spalding Gray: Stories Left To Tell.