Alice Waters | Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/","20210905051942","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1630819182"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic&display=swap" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <meta name="robots" content="index, follow, max-image-preview:large, max-snippet:-1, max-video-preview:-1"/>  <title>Alice Waters | Academy of Achievement</title> <meta name="description" content="Owner of Chez Panisse, “the nation’s most widely-acclaimed restaurant,” Alice Waters has transformed modern cooking. She first became inspired by great food and the culture surrounding it on a trip to France at age 19. After earning a degree in French cultural studies at the University of California, she traveled throughout France, then returned to Berkeley, California. At first, Waters intended to be a teacher, but she soon found she preferred cooking to teaching, and decided to open a neighborhood bistro like those she had loved in the South of France. It was eight years before Chez Panisse showed a profit, but in time, food lovers sought it out, and restaurant chefs in other cities began to imitate her approach. Her interest in serving the finest produce in season taught her that foods grown organically, in environmentally sound conditions, would produce the best flavors. Today, Alice Waters encourages American families to eat together, and to take an interest in what they eat, and how it is grown and prepared."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="Alice Waters | Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="Owner of Chez Panisse, “the nation’s most widely-acclaimed restaurant,” Alice Waters has transformed modern cooking. She first became inspired by great food and the culture surrounding it on a trip to France at age 19. After earning a degree in French cultural studies at the University of California, she traveled throughout France, then returned to Berkeley, California. At first, Waters intended to be a teacher, but she soon found she preferred cooking to teaching, and decided to open a neighborhood bistro like those she had loved in the South of France. It was eight years before Chez Panisse showed a profit, but in time, food lovers sought it out, and restaurant chefs in other cities began to imitate her approach. Her interest in serving the finest produce in season taught her that foods grown organically, in environmentally sound conditions, would produce the best flavors. Today, Alice Waters encourages American families to eat together, and to take an interest in what they eat, and how it is grown and prepared."/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2021-02-11T14:46:56+00:00"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/waters-Feature-Image.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:site" content="@achievers1961"/> <script type="application/ld+json" class="yoast-schema-graph">{"@context":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/#organization","name":"Academy of Achievement","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/","sameAs":["https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.linkedin.com/company/american-academy-of-achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChe_87uh1H-NIMf3ndTjPFw","https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy_of_Achievement","https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://twitter.com/achievers1961"],"logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/#logo","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","contentUrl":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/12.png","width":1200,"height":630,"caption":"Academy of Achievement"},"image":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/#logo"}},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/#website","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/","name":"Academy of Achievement","description":"A museum of living history","publisher":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/search/{search_term_string}","query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/#primaryimage","inLanguage":"en-US","url":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/waters-Feature-Image.jpg","contentUrl":"/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/waters-Feature-Image.jpg","width":2800,"height":1120},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/#webpage","url":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/","name":"Alice Waters | Academy of Achievement","isPartOf":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2019-06-08T06:14:08+00:00","dateModified":"2021-02-11T14:46:56+00:00","description":"Owner of Chez Panisse, \u201cthe nation\u2019s most widely-acclaimed\u00a0restaurant,\u201d Alice Waters has transformed modern cooking. She first became\u00a0inspired by\u00a0great food and the culture surrounding it on a trip to France at\u00a0age 19. After earning a degree in French cultural studies at the University of\u00a0California,\u00a0she traveled throughout France, then returned to Berkeley,\u00a0California. At first, Waters intended to be a teacher, but she soon found she\u00a0preferred cooking\u00a0to teaching, and decided to open a neighborhood bistro like\u00a0those she had loved in the South of France. It was eight years before Chez\u00a0Panisse showed\u00a0a profit, but in time, food lovers sought it out, and restaurant\u00a0chefs in other cities began to imitate her approach. Her interest in serving\u00a0the finest\u00a0produce in season taught her that foods grown organically, in\u00a0environmentally sound conditions, would produce the best flavors. Today, Alice Waters encourages American families to eat together, and to take an interest in what they\u00a0eat, and how it is grown and prepared.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Achievers","item":"https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Alice Waters"}]}]}</script>  <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://s.w.org/"/> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/web/20210905051942cs_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/dist/styles/main-fb4131a9f6.css"> <script src="/web/20210905051942js_/https://achievement.org/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery.min.js?ver=3.5.1" id="jquery-core-js"></script> <script src="/web/20210905051942js_/https://achievement.org/wp-includes/js/jquery/jquery-migrate.min.js?ver=3.3.2" id="jquery-migrate-js"></script> <script async src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942js_/https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-2384096-1"></script> <script> window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [ ] ; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag( 'js', new Date () ) ; gtag( 'config', 'UA-2384096-1'); gtag( 'config', 'AW-1021199739'); </script> </head> <body data-rsssl="1" class="achiever-template-default single single-achiever postid-62014 alice-waters sidebar-primary">  <header class="main-header bg-black"> <div class="search-container clearfix"> <div class="container"> <a class="brand" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/"> <img class="logo" src="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/logo@2x.png" alt="Academy of Achievement"/> </a> <div class="search-form__container"> <form action="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/" method="get" class="search-form"> <input type="search" name="s" id="search" class="form-control transparent-input" placeholder="Search" autocomplete="off" value=""/> <label for="s"><i class="icon-icon_search"></i></label> </form> </div> <ul id="menu-header-navigation" class="header-menu list-unstyled"><li class="menu-item menu-home"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/">Home</a></li> <li class="active menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-our-members"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/">Our Members</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="active menu-item menu-member-interviews"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/">Member Interviews</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-the-arts"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.the-arts">The Arts</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-business"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.business">Business</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-science-exploration"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.science-exploration">Science & Exploration</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-public-service"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.public-service">Public Service</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-sports"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.sports">Sports</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-achiever-universe"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/universe/">Achiever Universe</a></li> </ul> </li> <li class="menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-the-summit"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/">The Summit</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-summit-overview"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/">Summit Overview</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2019"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2019/">2019</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2017"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2017/">2017</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2014"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2014/">2014</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2012"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2012/">2012</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2010"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2010/">2010</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2009"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2009/">2009</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2008"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2008/">2008</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2007"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2007/">2007</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2006"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2006/">2006</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2005"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2005/">2005</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2004"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2004/">2004</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-2003"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/2003/">2003</a></li> </ul> </li> <li class="menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-our-history"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/">Our History</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-about-the-academy"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/">About The Academy</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-academy-patrons"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/patrons/">Academy Patrons</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-delegate-alumni"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/alumni/">Delegate Alumni</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-directors-our-team"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/director-staff/">Directors & Our Team</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-golden-plate-awards-council"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/awards-council/">Golden Plate Awards Council</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-golden-plate-awardees"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/">Golden Plate Awardees</a></li> </ul> </li> <li class="menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-keys-to-success"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/">Keys to Success</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-overview"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/">Overview</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-passion"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-vision"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-preparation"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/preparation/">Preparation</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-courage"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/courage/">Courage</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-perseverance"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-integrity"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/integrity/">Integrity</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-the-american-dream"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/the-american-dream/">The American Dream</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-recommended-books"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/recommended-books/">Recommended Books</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-find-my-role-model"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/find-my-role-model/">Find My Role Model</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> <div class="nav-toggle"> <div class="icon-bar top-bar"></div> <div class="icon-bar middle-bar"></div> <div class="icon-bar bottom-bar"></div> </div> <div class="search-toogle icon-icon_search" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#searchModal" data-gtm-category="search" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Header Search Icon"></div> </div> </div> </header> <div class="" role="document"> <div class="content"> <main class="main"> <div class="feature-area__container"> <header class="feature-area feature-area--has-image ratio-container ratio-container--feature"> <figure class="feature-box"> <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image feature-area__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/waters-Feature-Image.jpg [(max-width:544px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/waters-Feature-Image-1400x560.jpg [(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/waters-Feature-Image.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">Alice Waters</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Food Revolutionary</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-62014 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-chef careers-restaurateur"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="banner clearfix"> <div class="banner--single clearfix"> <div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2"> <div class="banner__image__container"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <img class="lazyload banner__image" data-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/WhatItTakes_waters-256-190x190.png" alt=""/> </figure> </a> </div> <div class="banner__text__container"> <h3 class="serif-3 banner__headline"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> Listen to this achiever on <i>What It Takes</i> </a> </h3> <p class="sans-6 banner__text m-b-0"><i>What It Takes</i> is an audio podcast produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: public service, science and exploration, sports, technology, business, arts and humanities, and justice.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">It’s a very sensual experience to eat. And I think romance is about the senses and a connection with somebody or with a group of people. It’s about that connection that is without words. Sometimes you just want to feel it.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">Earth Mother of California Cuisine</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> April 28, 1944 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><figure id="attachment_62181" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62181" style="width: 634px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62181 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MN-AP668_WATERS_8S_20170925172457.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62181 lazyload" alt="" width="634" height="634" data-sizes="(max-width: 634px) 100vw, 634px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MN-AP668_WATERS_8S_20170925172457.jpg 634w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MN-AP668_WATERS_8S_20170925172457-190x190.jpg 190w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MN-AP668_WATERS_8S_20170925172457-380x380.jpg 380w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MN-AP668_WATERS_8S_20170925172457.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62181" class="wp-caption-text">1950s: Alice Waters dressed in a cowboy outfit with her three sisters at Christmas in New Jersey. (© Alice Waters)</figcaption></figure> <p>Alice Waters was born in Chatham, New Jersey, the second of four sisters.  Her father, Charles, worked as a management consultant while her mother, Margaret, worked at home.  Her mother was interested in making healthy food choices for her family and limiting her children’s sugar intake, but by her own account, the young Alice was a picky eater, who took no great interest in where her food came from or how it was produced.</p> <p>She enrolled in the University of California at Santa Barbara, then transferred to the University of California at Berkeley, arriving in 1964, just as the campus was rocked by the first of the era’s student-led protest movements.  The Berkeley Free Speech Movement arose in response to the university’s ban on campus political activity by groups other than the two national political parties.  Students who had participated in the Civil Rights Movement’s “Freedom Summer,” registering African American voters in the Deep South, fought efforts by the campus police to enforce the ban met with civil disobedience by Berkeley students, and mass arrests.  Waters was inspired by the movement, particularly by the impassioned oratory of one of the movement’s leaders, graduate student Mario Savio.  Berkeley students eventually won the right of free political expression on campus, allowing more students to question the political consensus of the Cold War era.  The Berkeley campus and the surrounding San Francisco Bay Area became a center of resistance to what many saw as the oppressive conformity of the previous decade.</p> <figure id="attachment_62183" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62183" style="width: 970px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62183 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1969-Alice-Waters-Montessori-School-Teacher-in-Berkeley-CA.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62183 lazyload" alt="" width="970" height="652" data-sizes="(max-width: 970px) 100vw, 970px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1969-Alice-Waters-Montessori-School-Teacher-in-Berkeley-CA.jpg 970w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1969-Alice-Waters-Montessori-School-Teacher-in-Berkeley-CA-380x255.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1969-Alice-Waters-Montessori-School-Teacher-in-Berkeley-CA-760x511.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1969-Alice-Waters-Montessori-School-Teacher-in-Berkeley-CA.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62183" class="wp-caption-text">1969: Alice Waters teaching at a Montessori school. Waters graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1967 with a degree in French cultural studies before training at the International Montessori School in London.</figcaption></figure> <p>Waters was studying French history and culture with particular emphasis on the tumultuous century encompassing the French Revolution and its aftermath.  As part of her program, she had the opportunity to study for a year in France, and at age 19, she packed her bags for Paris.  In France, Waters found that her fascination with things French extended beyond history to the food culture and cuisine of contemporary France.  She lived at the bottom of a market street where she was enchanted by the fresh seasonal produce for sale and the custom of buying fresh ingredients daily.</p> <figure id="attachment_62191" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62191" style="width: 1099px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62191 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-Waters-Opening-Night-Chez-Panisse.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62191 lazyload" alt="" width="1099" height="569" data-sizes="(max-width: 1099px) 100vw, 1099px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-Waters-Opening-Night-Chez-Panisse.jpg 1099w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-Waters-Opening-Night-Chez-Panisse-380x197.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-Waters-Opening-Night-Chez-Panisse-760x393.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-Waters-Opening-Night-Chez-Panisse.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62191" class="wp-caption-text">In 1971, Alice Waters, at the age of twenty-seven, and UC Berkeley comparative literature professor Paul Aratow open their pioneering restaurant, Chez Panisse, in an arts and crafts house along Shattuck Avenue, in Berkeley.</figcaption></figure> <p>In the United States, the growth of suburban communities and interstate highways had separated most people from the source of the food they ate.  In the 1950s and ‘60s, more and more Americans shopped at supermarkets or grabbed food on the run from fast food establishments.  The nation’s diet was increasingly dominated by processed foods, transported over great distances and preserved by freezing and canning, or with chemical additives.  In France, Waters found, more people shopped at farmers’ markets, buying produce in season from the farmers themselves, with close attention to the source and quality of everything they ate.  While Americans bought their bread and baked goods sealed in plastic, the French more often bought theirs fresh from the oven of a neighborhood bakery.  In later years, Waters recalled her experience in France as a great awakening of the senses and an expanded consciousness of the value of dining as a communal experience.</p> <figure id="attachment_62251" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62251" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62251 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395323.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62251 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1550" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395323.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395323-380x258.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395323-760x517.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395323.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62251" class="wp-caption-text">1982: Alice Waters with Chez Panisse chefs and staff in front of the restaurant in Berkeley, California. (Susan Wood)</figcaption></figure> <p>After a year, she returned to Berkeley and found the campus and surrounding community more convulsed than ever by resistance to America’s military involvement in Vietnam.  Waters volunteered for the congressional campaign of antiwar journalist Robert Scheer, and surrounded herself with a circle of like-minded friends, preparing communal meals for political meetings that lasted long into the night.</p> <p>After graduating from Berkeley in 1967 with a degree in French cultural studies, she trained at the International Montessori School in London, intrigued by the Montessori method of childhood education, which emphasizes hands-on experience of practical activities.  She traveled to Turkey, experiencing another food culture and an ancient tradition of hospitality, and then spent another year in France, deepening her knowledge of French gastronomy.</p> <figure id="attachment_62244" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62244" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62244 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153396994.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62244 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1546" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153396994.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153396994-380x258.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153396994-760x515.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153396994.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62244" class="wp-caption-text">1982: Chef and restaurateur Alice Waters in her restaurant, Chez Panisse, Berkeley, California. (Susan Wood/Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>Back in Berkeley, she taught in a Montessori school and continued cooking for friends, experimenting with local produce and the cooking techniques she had absorbed in France.  More and more of her time and interest centered on food and the cultivation of a mindful practice of eating and entertaining.  She began writing restaurant reviews for a local “underground” weekly, <em>The</em> <em>San Francisco Express Times</em>, and her column soon became a forum for her thoughts on tasteful, healthy eating.  By this time, she had concluded that whatever contribution she would make to society would not be in the form of traditional political activism.</p> <figure id="attachment_62239" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62239" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62239 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1989-wp-GettyImages-50591174.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62239 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1512" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1989-wp-GettyImages-50591174.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1989-wp-GettyImages-50591174-380x252.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1989-wp-GettyImages-50591174-760x504.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1989-wp-GettyImages-50591174.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62239" class="wp-caption-text">1989: Chef Alice Waters holding organically grown vegetables. (John Dominis/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>As friends from the antiwar movement extended their activism into environmentalism and other causes, Waters increasingly came to see the communal table as the centerpiece of a healthy society.  In 1971, at age 27, Waters opened a restaurant with a small group of friends.  With only $10,000 in capital, they rented a two-story stucco house on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley.</p> <p>Waters named it Chez Panisse for a character in the memorable trilogy of films by French playwright and director Marcel Pagnol. She sought to recreate the experience of dining at a French country inn.  Using only the freshest seasonal ingredients, Chez Panisse offered a single fixed-price, four-course dinner menu that changed every evening.</p> <figure id="attachment_62397" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62397" style="width: 1378px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62397 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Vegetables-Alice-Waters-1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62397 lazyload" alt="" width="1378" height="1908" data-sizes="(max-width: 1378px) 100vw, 1378px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Vegetables-Alice-Waters-1.jpg 1378w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Vegetables-Alice-Waters-1-274x380.jpg 274w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Vegetables-Alice-Waters-1-549x760.jpg 549w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Vegetables-Alice-Waters-1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62397" class="wp-caption-text">1996: <em>Chez Panisse Vegetables</em> by Alice L. Waters. Waters and her friends at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California have dedicated themselves to the ideal of serving the finest, freshest foods with simplicity and style. From tender baby asparagus in early spring, to the colorful spectrum of peppers at the height of summer; crisp, leafy chicories in autumn, to sweet butternut squash in the dark of winter, much of the inspiration about what to put on the menu comes from the high quality produce Waters and her chefs seek out year-round. (Photo credit: Morrow Cookbooks)</figcaption></figure> <p>The restaurant opened to a packed house for two consecutive servings on its first evening, but Waters found it difficult to control costs.  Her father mortgaged his house to help keep the business afloat and volunteered management advice to rationalize the restaurant’s operations.  Eight years passed before the business showed a profit, but Waters maintained her insistence on the highest quality of seasonal, locally sourced ingredients, and Chez Panisse gradually won a devoted following.  Waters formed close working relationship with her suppliers, building a network of farmers, ranchers and artisans. She gave menu credit to the farms that provided her ingredients, a practice that other restaurateurs soon emulated.</p> <figure id="attachment_62398" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62398" style="width: 2580px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62398 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Cafe-Cookbook-Alice-Waters-1.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62398 lazyload" alt="" width="2580" height="1887" data-sizes="(max-width: 2580px) 100vw, 2580px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Cafe-Cookbook-Alice-Waters-1.jpg 2580w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Cafe-Cookbook-Alice-Waters-1-380x278.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Cafe-Cookbook-Alice-Waters-1-760x556.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Cafe-Cookbook-Alice-Waters-1.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62398" class="wp-caption-text">1999: (left) Alice Waters at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market; (right) <em>Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook</em> by Alice L. Waters. In this cookbook, the follow-up to the award-winning <em>Chez Panisse Vegetables</em>, Alice Waters and her team of talented cooks offer 140 of the café’s best-recipes—some that have been on the menu since the day café opened and others reinvented with the honesty and ingenuity that have made Chez Panisse so famous. (Photo: Morrow Cookbooks)</figcaption></figure> <p>In 1980, Waters expanded the operation to include an upstairs café serving an <em>à la carte</em> menu for lunch and dinner.   Waters married San Francisco wine merchant Stephen Singer; their daughter, Fanny, named for another character in the Pagnol films, was born in 1983.  The following year, Waters opened Café Fanny, a breakfast and lunch establishment a few blocks from Chez Panisse.</p> <p>Initially, Waters had sought fresh ingredients for taste alone, but in her dealing with farmers, she found that organic produce offered the best flavors, and in time, she became an enthusiastic advocate of organic farming and environmentally sustainable agriculture.  Organic farmer Bob Cannard of Green String Farms in Petaluma, California joined her network of suppliers in 1985.  Cannard’s principles of caring for the soil that produces the food we eat have guided Alice Waters ever since.</p> <figure id="attachment_62233" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62233" style="width: 2031px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62233 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2005-GettyImages-56115917.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62233 lazyload" alt="" width="2031" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 2031px) 100vw, 2031px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2005-GettyImages-56115917.jpg 2031w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2005-GettyImages-56115917-257x380.jpg 257w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2005-GettyImages-56115917-515x760.jpg 515w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2005-GettyImages-56115917.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62233" class="wp-caption-text">November 7, 2005: Chef, author, food activist Alice Waters discusses the Edible Schoolyard Project with Charles, Prince of Wales, at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. (D. Ross Cameron-Pool and Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>In 1992, Alice Waters became the first woman to receive the James Beard Award as the Best Chef in America.  As visitors from around the world flocked to the little restaurant in Berkeley, Alice Waters became a national figure.  The phrase “California Cuisine” entered the language, and restaurants around the world proclaimed their dedication to “farm-to-table” dining.  Waters continues to insist on serving locally sourced foods, and devotees of her philosophy have become known as “locavores.” The Chez Panisse supply network now encompasses 85 farms and ranches, all within 100 miles of the restaurant.</p> <figure id="attachment_62219" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62219" style="width: 2000px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62219 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2008-GettyImages-106200573.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62219 lazyload" alt="" width="2000" height="3000" data-sizes="(max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2008-GettyImages-106200573.jpg 2000w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2008-GettyImages-106200573-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2008-GettyImages-106200573-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2008-GettyImages-106200573.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62219" class="wp-caption-text">October 31, 2008: Alice Waters attends Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project’s “Hulaween.” (Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>Alice Waters has worked to promote her ideas in the world beyond Berkeley’s so-called “gourmet ghetto.”  A letter to President Bill Clinton persuaded him and First Lady Hillary Clinton to create an organic vegetable garden at the White House.  Waters has shared her ideas — and her recipes — in a series of bestselling books, beginning with <em>The Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook</em> in 1995.</p> <p>That same year, Waters founded the Edible Schoolyard Project at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley.  Waters had begun working with the Berkeley public school system to integrate growing, cooking, and serving food into the school curriculum.  Informed by her earlier training in Montessori teaching, the Edible Schoolyard Project allows the students to tend a one-acre organic garden and has turned an abandoned cafeteria into a “kitchen classroom, ” where the students learn to prepare the food they have grown themselves.   On the 25th anniversary of her restaurant, Waters created the Chez Panisse Foundation to support educational outreach.  There are now Edible Garden programs in Greensboro, North Carolina and in New Orleans, as well as in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.</p> <figure id="attachment_62215" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62215" style="width: 2306px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62215 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2010-In-the-Green-Kitchen.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62215 lazyload" alt="" width="2306" height="3073" data-sizes="(max-width: 2306px) 100vw, 2306px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2010-In-the-Green-Kitchen.jpg 2306w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2010-In-the-Green-Kitchen-285x380.jpg 285w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2010-In-the-Green-Kitchen-570x760.jpg 570w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2010-In-the-Green-Kitchen.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62215" class="wp-caption-text">2010: <em>In the Green Kitchen</em> by Alice Waters presents essential cooking techniques to be learned by heart. (Penguin)</figcaption></figure> <p>In 2001, <em>Gourmet</em> magazine named Chez Panisse the Best Restaurant in America.  The PBS television series <em>American Masters</em> profiled Waters in its 2003 film <em>Alice Waters and her Delicious Revolution</em>.  As the world has learned to enjoy and imitate the style of cooking Alice Waters pioneered, she has received numerous honors for revolutionizing the way we eat and the way we think about food. In 2004, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the James Beard Foundation, while the National Audubon Society honored her with the Rachel Carson Award for her commitment to sustainable agriculture.</p> <figure id="attachment_62210" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62210" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62210 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-487628256.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62210 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1503" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-487628256.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-487628256-380x251.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-487628256-760x501.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-487628256.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62210" class="wp-caption-text">September 10, 2015: President Barack Obama presents the 2014 National Humanities Medal to Alice Waters in a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C. Alice Waters was honored for celebrating the bond between the ethical and the edible as a chef, author, and advocate. (Photo by Alex Wong and Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p>In 2002, Waters became vice president of Slow Food International, an organization that works to preserve biodiversity and local food traditions. She conceived and helped create the Yale Sustainable Food Project in 2003, and in 2007, the Rome Sustainable Food Project at the American Academy in Rome.  She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007 and shared the Harvard Medical School’s Global Environmental Citizen Award with Kofi Annan in 2008.</p> <p>In a 2009 appearance on the <em>60 Minutes</em> television program, she made an open appeal to the newly elected president, Barack Obama, to set the example of  cultivating an organic vegetable garden.  The First Lady, Michelle Obama, took her up on the suggestion and made the White House vegetable garden a centerpiece of her campaign against childhood obesity.</p> <figure id="attachment_62202" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62202" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62202 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-493097526.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62202 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1518" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-493097526.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-493097526-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-493097526-760x506.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-493097526.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62202" class="wp-caption-text">October 17, 2015: Alice Waters with her daughter and co-author of <em>My Pantry: Homemade Ingredients That Make Simple Meals Your Own</em>, Fanny Singer, attend TimesTalks at The Times Center in New York City. (Ron Adar/Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p>The Edible Garden Project has expanded into an international movement, teaching schoolchildren to grow and prepare natural healthy foods. Alice Waters has created the School Lunch Initiative, a national program aiming to make healthy, fresh, and sustainable meals a part of every school day.  She collaborates with the UC Berkeley Center for Weight and Health and the Center for Ecoliteracy, to advocate for free school lunch programs and to develop a sustainable food curriculum in every public school.  She hopes to see history and the sciences taught through the cultivation and preparation of food.  She is now campaigning for the Department of Agriculture to include organic fruits and vegetables in the nation’s school lunch program.</p> <p>Alice Waters has been honored not only by her own country but by the nation whose culture inspired her life’s work.  In 2010, she was inducted into France’s Legion of Honor. On the 40th anniversary of Chez Panisse in 2011, Alice Waters was honored with the inclusion of her likeness at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington. In 2015, she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama, recognizing her achievement in raising Americans’ awareness of healthy, sustainable eating and sustainable agriculture as the keys to a healthier population, a more livable environment, and a happier society.</p> <figure id="attachment_62195" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62195" style="width: 1725px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62195 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Coming-To-My-Senses.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62195 lazyload" alt="" width="1725" height="2550" data-sizes="(max-width: 1725px) 100vw, 1725px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Coming-To-My-Senses.jpg 1725w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Coming-To-My-Senses-257x380.jpg 257w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Coming-To-My-Senses-514x760.jpg 514w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Coming-To-My-Senses.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62195" class="wp-caption-text">2018: <em>Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook </em>by Alice Waters. In her memoir, Waters recalls the circuitous road and tumultuous times leading to the opening of America’s most influential restaurant. (Penguin)</figcaption></figure> <p>Waters has now published more than a dozen books, including <em>The Art of Simple Food </em>(2007), <em>The Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea</em> (2008), <em>In the Green Kitchen</em> (2010), <em>40 Years of Chez Panisse: The Power of Gathering</em> (2011),<em> My Pantry</em> (2015), and <em>Fanny in France: Travel Adventures of a Chef’s Daughter, With Recipes</em> (2016). The latest is her critically acclaimed memoir, <em>Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook</em><em> (2017).</em></p> <p>Although Waters has employed a series of talented chefs to run the kitchen at Chez Panisse, she continues to eat in the restaurant almost every day, while supervising the overall operation from her modest 1908 Craftsman-style home a few blocks away.</p> </body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 1998 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.chef">Chef</a></div> <div><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.restaurateur">Restaurateur</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> April 28, 1944 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p>Owner of Chez Panisse, “the nation’s most widely-acclaimed restaurant,” Alice Waters has transformed modern cooking. She first became inspired by great food and the culture surrounding it on a trip to France at age 19. After earning a degree in French cultural studies at the University of California, she traveled throughout France, then returned to Berkeley, California.</p> <p>At first, Waters intended to be a teacher, but she soon found she preferred cooking to teaching, and decided to open a neighborhood bistro like those she had loved in the South of France. It was eight years before Chez Panisse showed a profit, but in time, food lovers sought it out, and restaurant chefs in other cities began to imitate her approach.</p> <p>Her interest in serving the finest produce in season taught her that foods grown organically, in environmentally sound conditions, would produce the best flavors. Today, Alice Waters encourages American families to eat together, and to take an interest in what they eat, and how it is grown and prepared.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/lSMY-WLv-G4?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_43_52_14.Still014-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_43_52_14.Still014-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">Earth Mother of California Cuisine</h2> <div class="sans-2">Berkeley, California</div> <div class="sans-2">May 16, 2019</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You went to Paris when you were</strong> <strong>19</strong>.<strong> When you started eating over there, what was the influence that had on you?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/w3rHNvuFoB8?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_31_05_27.Still003-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_31_05_27.Still003-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Alice Waters: The food was really a very big surprise because I just was afraid of things that I didn’t know about. And yet, in the context of a country that really cared so much about how people ate and what people ate, I was drawn into it. You know, like the aroma of the bakery. You go in and you taste that warm baguette. And then you go in the next day, and you want that same baguette. It was a seduction, in a way. It was like, just seeing a beautiful place setting, seeing all of the fruits, the vegetables, that were going to be on the menu displayed in the front of the restaurants to bring you into that experience. And I was just drawn in.<strong> </strong></p> <p>I was going to school, and every day, I walked from my little apartment up the market street to get to the university. And I couldn’t believe the beauty of the vegetables — the lettuces, the colors. And it was always changing because it changed with the seasons. It even changed from a morning market to an afternoon market because the farmers would bring in different things in the evening. And I guess the aliveness of the food was irresistible.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>You’ve said the strawberries you ate in France reminded you of something you had known long before. </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Well certainly, those wild strawberries that I had in France had a kind of intensity about them. I do remember eating strawberries right in the garden when I was a little child, when they were warm in the sun. And I picked them off the plant. And so, that stayed with me somehow. And then, when I tasted that wild strawberry, I wanted to know exactly where it came from. And then I found out that you had to go out in the woods to pick them. And I wanted to have those again here in California. And actually, I found somebody who was willing to plant the forests at Chez Panisse.</p> <p><strong>Lots of people have gone to Europe and noticed that there was better food, more intense food, as you say. What was different about you that caused you to bring that experience home and make it a life’s work?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/uS9BpNuuUI0?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_53_24_13.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_53_24_13.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Alice Waters: It’s hard to say exactly what it was because it was a big picture of the culture of France. It wasn’t just about the food. It was about the concerts we went to. It was about the beauty of the parks, of the cathedrals, of the cafés — the life that the people were living. It seemed so civilized to me; it seemed so real, somehow. And I just wanted to live like the French. And when I came back home, I tried to find the food, of course. But I lit the candles on my table when I sat down for dinner. I set the table in a very particular way. I bought the napkins, and I folded them. I even picked flowers in the neighborhood to put on the table because I wanted it to be beautiful.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p><strong>And food, good food, was the center of conversation and connection to the community.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Exactly. I didn’t make that connection to the community at the beginning. Even at the beginning of the restaurant, I was looking for taste. I was really looking for taste. And ultimately, I ended up at the doorsteps of the organic local farmers because they were the ones that were growing food for taste, and they had different varietals that they planted.  And when they brought them to the restaurant, or they brought them to the farmer’s market, they were just picked. So they had that aliveness about it — the food.</p> <figure id="attachment_62260" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62260" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62260 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-635238019.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62260 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="1556" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-635238019.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-635238019-380x259.jpg 380w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-635238019-760x519.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-635238019.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62260" class="wp-caption-text">1982: Chef Alice Waters stands with other chefs in the kitchen of her restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley. (© Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>When you returned from Paris, you were back in Berkeley. It was the ‘60s. It was ground zero for the anti-war movement, the Free Speech Movement. How did the politics of the time influence you?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters:  I know I became politicized. I was so on the fringes of that movement — the Free Speech Movement. But I listened very carefully to what Mario Savio was talking about. I found out later, of course, he was Sicilian and always had a bottle of wine with his meals. And he had, I’m sure, this big vision of how we could change the world into a place that we all came together — that we felt responsible for each other, in a way. And I really believed him.</p> <p><strong>Even before you opened Chez Panisse, you were having small dinners with very interesting people in Berkeley. Can you tell us about the time right before you opened your restaurant?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/xOcC-Jwlqr8?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_44_39_07.Still004-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_44_39_07.Still004-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Alice Waters: A friend of mine, David Goines, was a good friend of a number of people that were printing a small newspaper in San Francisco. It was called the <em>San Francisco Express Times</em>. And so, they would have meetings at our house, and I would be there, sort of listening to their conversations about what they wanted to put in the newspaper. And then David had this idea: “Why don’t we do a restaurant column?” — and called it “Alice’s Restaurant.” So I would try and find a recipe to be in that part of that column. And it pushed me into asking everybody I knew, “What do you like to eat?” and “Do you have a special recipe that I could use for this column?” I started making these dishes at home and then feeding them to the people that had gathered to work on the newspaper, and they loved what I cooked. So it was kind of a way for me to research about food. At the same time, I was sort of cooking because I was researching for the column and trying out the recipes of friends.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Was there a point when you realized that you had a special gift for cooking?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/Zt_wZtU2skk?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Waters_Alice_2019_MasterEdit.00_38_33_02.Still021-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Waters_Alice_2019_MasterEdit.00_38_33_02.Still021-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/preparation/">Preparation</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Alice Waters: I wasn’t sure that I had a gift for cooking, but I knew that I had a gift for finding the ingredients, finding the dishes the people liked to eat, and that I was still intimidated by the cooking process. So that’s why I relied on recipes from other people. I wasn’t at all ready to improvise. Luckily, someone gave me the cookbooks of Elizabeth David. And her recipes were very bare bones. So I had to interpret what she meant, and sometimes I was less successful, and sometimes I was more. But she gave me a real aesthetic about food — the simplicity of it, the kind of purity of it she instills through her beautiful writing.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p><strong>So if it’s not a quarter cup of this and a pinch that, what’s the essence of a good meal? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I think it all has to do with ingredients. It’s about ripeness. It’s about finding the right olive oil and tasting and comparing. Which one do I like better? What vinegar do I want to use? How much garlic? But you’re always tasting and adjusting, all the way to the end. But I cook very, very simply.</p> <figure id="attachment_62286" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62286" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62286 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395423.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62286 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3297" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395423.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395423-263x380.jpg 263w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395423-526x760.jpg 526w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395423.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62286" class="wp-caption-text">1982: Alice Waters at a farm in the Sonoma Valley that provides goats’ cheese to Chez Panisse. (Susan Wood/Getty)</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>You’ve said that you’re a <em>good</em> cook but a <em>great</em> taster. Do you have a heightened sense of taste? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I think I might have a heightened sense of taste, but it comes a lot from practicing. It’s always interesting to me, that dialogue with myself, with other colleagues. Does it need more of that? Should we add that to it? And when you come out with something that’s better than the sum of the parts, it’s exhilarating.</p> <p><strong>Do you like to cook with others or alone? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I love to cook with other people. I do. I usually have friends come for dinner on Sundays. I buy the ingredients, and then they all come, and we talk about what we want to do. It’s really fun to be getting the opinions of other people. And it’s the way that we cook at Chez Panisse. We don’t have recipes that we follow. Yes, we do in pastry, when we know certain quantities, because you need that. But we’re using our oral history of cooking in the kitchens.  We’re being inspired by cookbooks, but we’re really fine-tuning it together. And every day, it’s a new day.</p> <p><strong>Let’s talk about 1971. You didn’t have that much money. You were only 27 and you wanted to open a restaurant. How did you pick this place on Shattuck Avenue?</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/bbHIe2hy1b4?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_53_24_13.Still006-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_53_24_13.Still006-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Alice Waters: I was looking at a lot of different places in Berkeley with my friend — my good friend Tom Letty — who was so excited about the idea of my opening a restaurant. He thought it was the greatest idea because he had eaten my food, and we had been such good friends, and he knew that this was my passion. So we went to places that were sort of a little too dark or too big. And then we saw this house on Shattuck Avenue that was a plumbing shop. It was just a two-story stucco house, but it was commercially sound. And I said, “Ah! It could be in a house.” So it could be just like I was serving my friends at home.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"><p><strong>Why didn’t you just call it Alice’s Restaurant, like your newspaper column?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Well, “Alice’s Restaurant,” that song, was attached to an Alice on the East Coast. And I knew I didn’t want my name involved. I had gone to see movies with Tom Letty, who was running a repertory theater, and I saw the films of Marcel Pagnol, and I fell in love with these films made in the ‘30s in France. And one of the characters in the films, his name was Panisse. And it had a certain ring to it. It could have been Chez Marius or Chez Fanny. But the name Panisse stuck. And as Tom pointed out, he was the only one in the films that ever made any money.</p> <p><strong>We’re in your kitchen with this gorgeous fireplace. When you lit it, you put some rosemary on the log. Do you always do that? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I always like the perfume of the fire in the house and rosemary. It quickly changes the tone of the room. It changes the way that I feel. So whenever I come home from a trip, I just put some rosemary, light it on fire, and just walk around the house. I used to do that at Chez Panisse, and sometimes we need to do that to make the entryway really inviting, if we’re cooking a dinner from the South of France or having a party. And aroma is very, very effective. Bread cooking or pizza cooking up in the wood oven upstairs really helps people to feel at home.</p> <figure id="attachment_62290" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62290" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62290 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-515138642.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62290 lazyload" alt="" width="2280" height="3437" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-515138642.jpg 2280w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-515138642-252x380.jpg 252w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-515138642-504x760.jpg 504w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-515138642.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62290" class="wp-caption-text">1982: Alice Waters with <em><span id="productTitle" class="a-size-large">Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook</span></em> filled with the restaurant’s best menus and transformations of classic French dishes. Waters says there’s “not a single person” who can resist her bouillabaisse. (Getty Images)</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>It’s not just the taste or even the look? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: It’s not just the taste. No. I want to really excite all of people’s senses. So I want it to smell good. I want it to taste good. I want it to look really beautiful. I don’t want too-loud sounds — the music to be too interruptive. I want maybe a little bit of music, when it’s quiet at the beginning of the evening, or a little jazz late at night. But I don’t want it to be interrupting people’s conversations.</p> <p>But I like people to pick things up with their hands, too. So we always serve something — whether it’s a little candy at the end, or whether it’s a crouton to begin, and they pick that up. That you want them to peel the orange or — again, I always thought that sometimes we should have a little sign that says, ”Eat with your hands,” so that you feel comfortable about picking up the quail and eating the bone — the leg.</p> <p><strong>I was struck in the master class that you teach online. You said at one point, “Peel the lemon toward you,” because it’s more beautiful.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Well, I think also more aromatic, again.</p> <p><strong>Is there a connection between food and romance?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: For me, absolutely. Absolutely.  It’s a very sensual experience to eat. And I think romance is about the senses and connection with somebody, or with a group of people. It’s about making that connection that is without words.  Sometimes you just want to feel it.</p> <p><strong>Your parents helped you when you started the restaurant.  What did they think of your success? </strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/4YtOaw7OViM?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.01_05_19_21.Still008-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.01_05_19_21.Still008-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Alice Waters: They were so proud of me. It’s so great when your parents really support you, but that you are so grateful to them for doing so. My parents have always had a garden, and my father had a feeling he could help me with the restaurant. I resisted it at first. But he came in, and he was so patient. He worked with our staff. He just introduced all of his organic, if you will, management skills. And he said — one of the things he said is, “You have to say, Alice — you can’t order people to do things. You have to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ And you have to tell them what they do well first, before you tell them what they don’t do so well — and how they can improve.” And I have really tried to practice what he proposed.</p> <p>I have never really managed the restaurant. We had a little group of us, and we divided up the management between the dining room manager, the café manager, the bar manager, the main cook in the kitchen, the main pastry person, and we all had our jobs. It was somebody also in the office. My father set up that group, too. He called it the ops group.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body data-rsssl="1"> <figure id="attachment_62277" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-62277" style="width: 2400px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-62277 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942im_/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/9780670016662.jpg"></noscript><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-62277 lazyload" alt="" width="2400" height="3335" data-sizes="(max-width: 2400px) 100vw, 2400px" data-srcset="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/9780670016662.jpg 2400w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/9780670016662-273x380.jpg 273w, /web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/9780670016662-547x760.jpg 547w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/9780670016662.jpg"><figcaption id="caption-attachment-62277" class="wp-caption-text">2016: <em>Fanny in France: Travel Adventures of a Chef’s Daughter, with Recipes</em> by Alice Waters is a treat for anyone who loves France, food, adventure—or all three! <em>Fanny in France</em> is also a beginner’s cookbook with simple, French-inspired recipes that encourage children and adults anywhere to cook and share delicious snacks and meals with family and friends using basic methods and the most sustainable ingredients. (Credit: Penguin Random House)</figcaption></figure> <p><strong>You could have expanded. It’s almost 50 years since you opened. You could have easily expanded the place and filled it every night and made a lot of money. How come you didn’t? It’s still a small restaurant in a house.</strong></p> </body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/gYBCJ9ZxMoE?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_43_13_07.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_43_13_07.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Alice Waters: I really believed in the values that I learned in the ‘60s. And one of them was not to do something to make money. Don’t do it to make money. Do it because you love the work. And I was never, ever interested in making money. I was ashamed even that I put the money from the restaurant in a bank. But I knew that if I made really tasty food, that people would come to eat, and that I would be able to keep the restaurant open. And fortunately, it has made money. But it’s important to me to pay the people well who work there. It was never about having an empire with lots of different restaurants. I didn’t want to travel to another place.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p>I just couldn’t imagine doing it. I couldn’t imagine doing it well. I felt like there would be a compromise always because it takes so much to keep Chez Panisse just at a certain level of quality. I just couldn’t imagine doing it. And again, I never wanted to sort of get on a plane and go visit these other places. I love knowing the customers who come in. I know them by name. I love knowing all the people who work there. There are almost 110 people who work at Chez Panisse.</p> <p><strong>You must have been asked so many times to open a restaurant in Los Angeles or New York. You were even asked to open one at the Louvre in Pair.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Well, that was the one place where I really entertained the idea because it was to be part of the decorative arts wing of the museum. I thought it could be sort of an international symbol of the beauty of food and of nourishment. And what better place than the center of Paris? I never imagined that I would run that place myself, but I imagined that it could be a place maybe run by a whole number of chefs from around the world who would bring his or her cooking to that location.</p> <p><strong>It was fairly shocking at the time that an American woman was asked to open a restaurant in France. What happened?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Well, I understood that it was a very big bureaucracy. And that when, in fact, all of the different people who made decisions about that particular location — that I wouldn’t be able to do it the way that I wanted to do it. I was given a contract basically for a kind of fast food restaurant. And I said no.</p> <p><strong>At a time when so many people are talking about income inequality in the United States and the difference between the owners or the CEOs and the workers, you gave the workers in your restaurant stock options.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Yes, we did.</p> <p><strong>That was fairly revolutionary.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I guess, again, that when you have the pleasure of working with a group of people — when you’re not in that pyramid structure of a normal restaurant kitchen, where there is a chef at the top and there’s sort of the <em>commis</em>, the workers, at the bottom — when you’re working more as a team, that it seems right to have some benefit from the success of the restaurant. I’ve even thought maybe it just should be like the Cheese Board across the street, a cooperative.</p> <p><strong>You recently had a yard sale at the restaurant. Whose idea was that? </strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/deIVTdkvvyE?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_57_06_23.Still007-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MasterEdit.00_57_06_23.Still007-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Alice Waters: Well, Fanny and I had always had yard sales out in front of the house, and I believe that there are beautiful things to be had at the flea market. I’ve always gone to the flea markets around the world, particularly in France, and brought things home. At the beginning of Chez Panisse, we used to go to the flea market to buy mismatched silverware that we had in the dining room. We had glasses. We had dishes that we bought. But especially, things like a cast iron pan. All of my cast irons have been purchased from the flea market. And they’re inexpensive. They’re so well made, you know. Whether it’s a belt or whether it’s a dress — I mean to last for 40 years, something that is made well, it’s a gift to me. I love finding them in the flea market. I wish that I could not buy one new thing ever again. I love to go to those second-hand stores.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p>There was something about the fact that I was sitting there, and that there were all these menus from the years before, and that there were clothes — my hats, my dresses — that I wore at the beginning of Chez Panisse. There was something about them being practically given away in a yard sale that touched people. And of course, I just felt the emotion of that.</p> <p><strong>Do you feel different now than you did in the ‘60s? Francis Ford Coppola, Bill Clinton, movie stars, everybody comes to your restaurant. You teared up when you were talking about the yard sale.</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/igPgEROWqTo?feature=oembed&hd=1&modestbranding=1&rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Waters_Alice_2019_MasterEdit.00_17_30_07.Still017-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Waters_Alice_2019_MasterEdit.00_17_30_07.Still017-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>Alice Waters: That’s the kind of feeling that we all had in the ‘60s. It was like, you’d take your bike down to the freeway; you’d park it. You never locked it up. You put your thumb out; you’d get picked up, driven to San Francisco. Same way back home. Pick up your bike. Ride up the hill. I just felt a sense of generosity. And we weren’t afraid. We weren’t thinking about: “What is that person going to give to me?” It was always just a feeling of “You can share this. You need a room? Come stay in my room.” And it was the way I felt when I traveled around the world, that those indigenous cultures have that sense of hospitality. I went to Turkey, if you can imagine, and pitched a tent. Two women pitching a tent out in a field. And the next morning finding a bowl of warm goat’s milk under the tent flap. You know? Where is that sense of humanity now?</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p>It’s in there. I really feel like it’s in there. It’s just been buried by greed. And we have to find our way out. I really feel like public education, it’s our last truly democratic institution, as Gloria Steinem said many years ago, and I believe that. We can reach every single child. Well, here she is, open and learning. And we can. We can be the change we want to make. We can teach these values. We can teach them how to take care of the plants. Look at the soil. See all the earthworms and the little bugs in there and how important they all are to the big picture. And it’s utterly fascinating to children. Utterly fascinating.</p> </div>    <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>Did the food you ate when you were growing up have an influence on you later? What kind of eater were you as a child?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I would say I was a very picky eater when I was a child. And I liked some things and really didn’t like others. And my mother and father wanted me to eat everything on my plate. They believed in that balanced meal: potatoes, a vegetable, and a protein. A meat, a fish. And three meals a day. So we always had breakfast with eggs and bacon. But my mother wanted us to have healthy food, but she didn’t quite know what that was. So it was sprinkling wheat germ on things, and buying whole wheat bread, and not having sweets around the house. So there weren’t sort of cookies in the jar. I had to sneak off to the bakery to find those. And we had to take vitamins.</p> <p><strong>Do you think it was a smart idea for your parents to say you had to eat everything on your plate?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I think it was a really important idea that there were people around the world that didn’t have anything to eat. And they would always talk about the children in India and to think about them. And here you have this plate of food, and you don’t want to waste anything. I remember my parents had a tiny little garbage can, and I think it was really picked up once a week.</p> <p>So there were very few things in there that they didn’t just automatically recycle. Certainly wasn’t any plastic at that time. They kept all the newspapers and all the wrapping papers from presents. And the milk came in bottles, so you put the bottles out the back door. Maybe my father did some composting because we always had a garden behind the house. During the war, they began that victory garden and they actually ate out of it.</p> <p><strong>You were born in 1944. Can you remind people what food was like when you were growing up?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I think that what was happening is that we were very, very limited in what we ate during the war years. So when that was over, it was like people wanted food, and that was kind of the beginning of the fast food industry. They saw that need and that desire. So in came the food that was very easy to cook: frozen foods and just packaged whole meals that you just heated up in the oven. People felt liberated from the idea of cooking. And I think they really felt liberated because it was never considered in this country as being a pleasure to cook. It was always a <em>duty</em>, particularly of women.</p> <p><strong>You’ve entertained many interesting people in this kitchen, including Julia Child. What was it like to meet her? What was it like to cook with her? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I was very intimidated. She was such a presence. We became very good friends after that time. But she was towering over me.</p> <p><strong>She was six-two. How tall are you? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I’m five-two. So she was way up there. But she was so helpful to me. She wanted me to feel comfortable about what I was cooking. And I was cooking something so simple, you know. And she would ask me questions: “How do you cut this? How do you cut that onion like that?” or whatever I was doing. And she said, “It’s so interesting to me.” I appreciated her energy and her humor so much, and longed for her to teach us all how to cook again in this country.</p> <p><strong>You taught America how to think about what we now take for granted: the farm-to-table movement. You said we should know the plot of land where our tomatoes come from. How do you feel about this amazing legacy of knowing where your food comes from? Organic food? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Well, again, I feel very lucky that I was in France when France was a slow food country. In other words, they had all of these values in place. They knew their farmers. They would go to the market; they would connect with them. They served the food that was in their region, so it was locally available.</p> <p><strong>How do you think we’re doing now in the United States on this? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I’m very encouraged when I really look at how the farm-to-table movement has grown. But when you look at it in relationship to the number of people in this country, it’s shocking that we are so small. That we have had an influence, but we haven’t really been able to change the diet of America. And we haven’t been able to really connect with the local sustainable farmers and ranchers.</p> <p><strong>Why?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: We haven’t because the fast food industry is so powerful and persuasive, and they have taught us a whole other set of values. So that when we eat fast food, or we eat in a fast food way, we’re digesting the fast, cheap, and easy. We’re understanding that cooking is drudgery. That farming is drudgery. We’re understanding that things should be available 24/7. That it doesn’t matter where they come from because there’s always more where that came from. I mean we want avocado sandwiches now. They’re everywhere. And where did the avocados come from? What does it take to grow them? What’s it causing to the farming industry around the world by our desire to have them wherever we are?</p> <p><strong>There’s no doubt that more people are interested in cooking healthy food. There’s more consciousness among students. At the same time, there’s more diabetes and overweight people. So what’s the trend line? What’s the future of food?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I think it’s inevitable that we have to change the way that we’re eating around the world because we’re affecting climate, and in a very big way. We’re shipping food everywhere. We’re farming in an unsustainable way. If we farm organically, we can take all of our scraps and put them in the ground and pull the carbon back down in the earth. And this is an amazing thing that we could do. But we have to not just think that health begins in our choice of food in a grocery store. Health begins in the ground. Our real nourishment comes from all of those microbes and all of the way the soil is allowed to be itself. So our farmer, Bob Cannard, he’s amazing. He says his carrots are ten times more nourishing than anybody else’s.</p> <p><strong>You were one of the first people to put the name of the farm where the food comes from on the menu. Now we see that all across the country.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I was so grateful to Bob, and I just wanted him to know that. We started putting out the names of the farms because we wanted people to know that we were supporting those people that were taking care of the land and that the good taste came from those people picking that food when it’s ripe and bringing it to the restaurant.</p> <p><strong>Do you still worry that there are too many antibiotics and pesticides in our food?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I know there’s too many. And I know that that is really what’s making us sick. And the food industry is designing food that is addictive. I mean lots of salt, lots of sugar. But even, they’re trying to really deceive us in the way that the packaging is done. There’s many labels that tell us what’s in the food, but it doesn’t tell us how it’s farmed. I want to know how it is farmed. I want it to have an organic label on it. I want to know what that organic label really means because organic in China means something different than organic in California. I want to know who is doing the inspection. I really want to know what kind of land the animals are grazing on. Has that been treated for herbicides or pesticides?</p> <p><strong>You wrote a letter to Bill Clinton when he was president. What did you want from him? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I wanted him to plant a garden on the White House lawn — I imagined on the front lawn. Because if the presidency represented sustainability and spoke about nourishment, that message would go around the world. I remember when FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt — she had a vegetable garden — but they inspired the victory gardens that were planted during World War II. And I knew the power of the presidency. So I thought if they did that, and if they ate that way in the White House and invited the dignitaries from around the world, that a message would come.</p> <p><strong>So what was the reaction?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Well, I think that they heard me, and they were friends — very good friends of friends. And I know that Hillary planted the roof garden with tomatoes. But I really wanted one on the grounds of the White House. I wanted it to be a symbol of a set of values.</p> <p><strong>Of course, Michelle Obama then took it to a new level. </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: It was very exciting to see that garden being planted right away at the beginning of the presidency. She planted that garden with students.</p> <p><strong>Did you talk to her about that?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I did. I talked to her about it before Obama became president. And I had hoped that she would really do it. But I never imagined that she would do it so quickly and with students involved. And also to build a compost and make a hive for the bees. That image of her digging in the garden went around the world. I was in Rome when that happened and it was front page news. I think that the fact that she did that with children was very important<span style="text-decoration: line-through;">.</span></p> <p><strong>You also talked to the future King of England, Prince Charles, who has been talking about organic food for a long time. What did you talk about with him? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Prince Charles came to the Edible Schoolyard Project in Berkeley. It was sort of unimaginable that he would take time out of his day to do that, but he did. I was just very impressed that he understood immediately how important it was to teach the next generation, beginning in kindergarten, to really connect with nature in that vital way.</p> <p><strong>You created the Edible Schoolyard at the Martin Luther King School in the ‘90s, wasn’t it?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: It’s about 25 years old now. It began at a middle school in Berkeley that has 1,000 kids, and they speak almost 22 different languages at home. So it was a really good cross-section of teenagers. I had the opportunity to create this program because the principal of the school felt that it needed to be beautified in some way. He had no idea that I wanted to really plant a vegetable garden and have a cooking classroom so that students could learn math or science out in a garden. So that they could “learn by doing” — a very important Montessori principle and probably the best way to retain knowledge.</p> <p>It was never meant to be a cooking class or gardening class per se. It was always meant to be a language class. For instance, in the kitchen, and use cooking to teach the language — the language of cooking. Also maybe Spanish, so you’d be cooking a tortilla soup or you’d be making the food of that culture. Maybe you’re in the garden, and you’re in a math class, but you’re picking those raspberries, and you’re eating them as you pass by. And you might be calculating seeds for a math class and planting those seeds and making how big should the bed be. So you’re actually doing the academic work.</p> <p><strong>And it’s basically telling kids, at a young age, that food is not something you just grab for 20 minutes a day.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: It’s empowering them to make good choices about what they eat. But it’s not directive in that way. It’s very, ”How do you want to season this?” and all the spices are there for them to do it. There are three tables in the kitchen classroom, and each table makes the dishes of a particular country. Maybe it’s Japan that they’re talking about and they’re learning to roll their sushi. But each table, it’s different.</p> <p>If I hadn’t seen what has happened at the Edible Schoolyard Project with teenagers — if I hadn’t seen that, I may have wondered whether I could really make an impression on children that came from different backgrounds, eating all kinds of things. But they fall in love.</p> <p>It’s six weeks to kale. I mean, truly. If they grow it, and they cook it, they all eat it. And that is what I’ve learned. If they only <em>grow</em> it, then 95 percent eat it. If they only <em>cook</em>, 95. But if they grow it <em>and</em> cook it, they eat it all.</p> <p><strong>Your next project is for all the public students in this huge state of California. What do you want for them? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I want all students in the State of California to have a free, sustainable school lunch. I want them to sit down together and have time to eat and talk. And I imagine that school lunch could actually be part of an academic subject. So when you’re studying, for instance, the geography of the Arabian Peninsula, maybe what you’re having for lunch is some hummus. Maybe you’re having pita bread. Maybe you’re having a little spicy carrot soup or a tabbouleh salad, but you’re buying those ingredients. The cafeteria workers — the cooks in the cafeteria will buy directly — like we’ve been doing for 47 years at Chez Panisse, directly from the producers who are local and sustainable.</p> <p><strong>Can the state afford it?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I believe that we can’t afford <em>not</em> do this. We have climate change upon us. We have an obesity epidemic. We have diabetes. One in ten children…</p> <p><strong>It’s an investment in health.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: It’s about the health of our children deeply. It’s about supporting the farmers who are taking care of the land. It’s about giving them the real cost of food. No middleman taking that money. They bring their food directly, and they are paid for it. It’s a very important relationship to develop. And once you do it, you can never go back because they bring the values of stewardship right through the cafeteria door. They bring it in to the students.</p> <p><strong>What would that accomplish? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: That, in turn, would address climate, using all the scraps to make the compost to bring down the carbon. Number two, it would deeply nourish the children. And number three, it would support all the farmers who are taking care of the land for the future of this planet. And those farmers and ranchers and fishermen need to feel supported completely, both financially and, in fact, by our gratefulness for the work that they do.</p> <p><strong>A lot of people say they would love to eat organic food but it’s just too expensive.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: That’s a myth that has been propagated by the fast food industry. First of all, we’ve always been willing to pay more for food than anything else, since the beginning of time. We always took care of the land because we knew that that’s where our nourishment came from. And we’ve always sat at the table with family and friends. But if you’re cooking, if you know how to cook, you know that you save the bones, and a chicken that may seem expensive at 28 dollars might provide three meals. Maybe you’re using the bones for one; maybe you’re using the breast and slicing them; maybe it’s for a dinner for four. Absolutely. It’s three meals.</p> <p>I tell people that everything that you eat really affects your good health. I am looking for the foods that are most nourishing, without herbicides and pesticides. We know how that is really damaging to our bodies. We have to make a decision that we can learn how to cook affordably. We <em>can</em> do this. And once you start to do it, you kind of fall in love with the whole experience — the pleasure that you give other people in your family or your friends. And this is not difficult to learn.</p> <p><strong>You have this lovely phrase: “Each of us has the opportunity to change the world every time we eat.” What do you mean by that? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I do believe that when you go and buy your food, for instance, at the farmer’s market, and you buy it from the person who is taking care of the land, and you believe that you are supporting that person or that group of people, it really goes all the way into the ground, the money that you spent. And then, it goes to you, and it goes to your family and friends, too, because you have this kind of irresistible taste that you want to share. So you change the way that you think about time. You want to make time, both to go to the farmer’s market, and you want to make time to sit at the table.</p> <p><strong>Your ambition is amazing. You want to change the world. How do you keep it fresh after almost five decades?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Food is a living thing, and the biodiversity of food is endless, so there’s always something new coming into your kitchen.</p> <p><strong>How do you stay current, and keep up with new food and what people want? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I’m always thinking that the market — the farmer’s market — is the best place to shop. I want to know — and bring even the farmer’s seeds from other places that I visit — because it is about their continued education. Like Bob Cannard used to plant three varieties of chicories. Now he probably has ten, and they’re every shade from bright yellow to lime green with maroon spots. And I’m just charmed by that lettuce. I call this a “delicious revolution” because it is not difficult to do. It’s almost like just turning around and going the other way, and it’s inside for all of us.</p> <p><strong>In your latest book, <em>Coming to My Senses</em>, you said that somewhere along the way, in our country’s rush to industrialization and consumerism, it began to feel like America had lost its humanity. What did you mean? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I mean that we are no longer saying “please” and “thank you.” We’re focused really on the fast, cheap, and easy — the money that we can make. We’re not thinking about what is happening to the people that are producing our food. And in that way, we’re dismissing them, we’re pushing them aside. We’re pushing aside the needs of the farmworkers.</p> <p>We’re pushing aside the people that get in the way of our ambition. And when schools become industrialized like they have, like the farms, where we’re creating a curriculum that is teaching our children that time is money; that more is better; that you need to get into college; that you need to <em>do</em> these things. We’re not teaching them the values that they need to live on the planet together. We’re not teaching them stewardship. We’re not teaching them friendship. We’re not teaching them about beauty. We’re not teaching them about the everyday pleasures of life. And as I say, I was lucky. I went to France when I was 19. I was edibly educated.</p> <p><strong>What is a great meal to you?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: What is a great meal? A great meal is knowing where your food came from and appreciating those people who allowed you to put it on the table for your family and friends. It’s definitely about that connection of the table, for me, and being exactly in step with nature. So when I look out there and I see my roses in the garden, and I see my salad, I know that it’s May, and I know that I’m in present time. I try to think of the beauty of that moment. But food does that for you.</p> <p><strong>Let’s talk about salad. You are credited with many things. Tell us how you changed the way Americans eat salad?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I ate salad in France, and it was kind of a revelation to me because it was served as a special course after the main dish. The idea was that it sort of cleansed your palate. So it was never a really big salad. It was a mixture of things. Now, the salad that I’m probably most known for is the <em>mesclun</em> salad. And that word means “a mix of things.” And it was a very special mix in the South of France. And in fact, so much sort of specific of that place right around Nice, that nobody knew about that salad anyplace else in France. You had to go to that region to eat that <em>mesclun</em> salad. And it would have garlic sometimes. Anchovies sometimes. It was kind of a peasant mix of things that the farmer picked in his field, and it always had <em>roquette</em> or rocket, and it always had probably dandelion greens. Things were a little bitter. Frisée. Maybe some colored lettuces like oakleaf, red oakleaf. And I took those seeds, and I brought them back here.</p> <p><strong>They let you through customs? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I never told anybody, and I planted them in my backyard. And when the restaurant really started, I had a whole salad garden that covered my whole lawn in the backyard.</p> <p><strong>This lettuce right beside you, it looks like a flower arrangement. Could you tell us about the different kinds of leaves you have there?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: This is kind of a red leaf kind of butter lettuce or romaine — looks that way and has a little touch of green around this stem. This is like a frisée lettuce — very bright green with frilly, ledged edges. And this one’s more of a lime green color with spots of maroon on it — which I just love that spotted lettuce. It is the chicories that are so beautiful in the sort of spring-winter months in California. And this one’s very maroon. And then there’s some <em>roquette</em>. Some rocket.</p> <p>For me, it’s the mixture that makes the magic. I think so many things can go in the salad. Even a little mint if you wanted it. Some basil. But I make a vinaigrette very, very simply. I usually pound a little garlic in a mortar, just grinding it until it disappears, adding some salt, some good red wine vinegar, and then I taste it. And I say, “Is this tasty?”</p> <p>You know, maybe it needs a little more salt to make it “mm-hmm.” And then I let that marry right there in the bowl for maybe ten minutes while I’m putting the salad together. I always wash the salad. I spin the salad dry, lay it out on towels, and roll it up because I want it to be very dry before I toss it. Because the water dilutes the vinaigrette. It changes it. So at the last minute, I put in the olive oil, stir it in. Mix it together in the vinegar. Not too much. I start out with sort of half and half. And sometimes, it needs more olive oil, but I like a little edge to the salad. I like that vinegar edge.</p> <p>It could be a squeeze of lemon in there. Maybe you’re making more of a lemon and olive oil vinaigrette. But to me, the secret is not to make it too oily. So I can dip a lettuce leaf in there to make sure that it’s right. But after a while, it maybe needs a little more salt or pepper after the salad’s tossed. I usually toss it with my hands.</p> <p><strong>Do you put it in the refrigerator before you serve it?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: You know, I don’t. Sometimes I will wash the leaves and dry them. And if it’s a whole day, I will put it in the refrigerator, but I don’t want it to be cold-cold. So I take it out before the dinner begins and let it just warm up a little bit. I always have salad with a meal. And sometimes, if I have the fire lit, I might put something like a piece of chicken on the fire or a piece of fish — and I’ll have salad. I might boil some potatoes. I might make some spicy rice. But I don’t cook in a really complicated way.</p> <p><strong>And you don’t start with a recipe.</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: That’s right. I always start with what I found in the market. I have an idea now, of course, of what’s going to be in the market. Summer, fall, winter, spring — what’s likely to be there, but I don’t know until I actually get it. Are they going to have that squid? I can’t count on that. And I know that I can count on my eggs. Sometimes I cook them on the stove.</p> <p><strong>Did you decide you don’t need a really big oven. You just need a gas oven?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I did. I don’t need a bigger stove than that. I know I don’t. I don’t do a lot of baking. I limit the amount of sweets I eat. I love to cook right on the burner. So I might make a tortilla there.</p> <p><strong>Without a pan? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Without a pan. I might make a little avocado salad. But I just put the tortilla right on the stove. I love to do this for my breakfast because I feel so connected. You know, there’s the aroma of the tortilla cooking. I just turn it over, and I can make myself a little breakfast in about two minutes.</p> <p><strong>If you’re talking to younger people who want to do what they love, what do they need? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I think the most important thing right now is to put down the electronics. Put them away. Just put them away. Put your cell phone; hide it. Hide your cell phone. Hide your screen. Because it really changes your relationship to the world around you. I just go out in my backyard because nature is really our mother. And to connect with the garden, to just throw yourself on the grass, to take a walk. Every morning, I take a walk. And sometimes, I just think, “Oh, it’s too much work to do that. It’s too hard. I just feel like staying in bed.” And I’m never disappointed because I’m looking around me. I’m looking at the flowers in other people’s gardens. I’m looking up to the sky and seeing the weather change. And this morning, it rained, and I got a little wet. But you’re connecting with the world around you. When we didn’t have cars, we walked everywhere.</p> <p><strong>Do you think that spurs your creativity? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I believe, as Montessori helped me to understand, that our senses are our pathways into our minds. So when we’re not using our hands, and we’re not listening, we’re only getting part of the picture. So when we teach children to learn their mathematics by counting beads and moving them from one side of the room to the other, or if they’re learning to feel the weight and volume of a glass of water versus a big pitcher of water, they’re experiencing volume. And through all of those senses, it’s being digested in all the dimensions. You’re not just reading about it or looking at a picture. You’re experiencing that.</p> <p><strong>You’ve talked about this multigenerational commune you that you might like to live in when you get older. Can you tell us about that?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I’ve always thought about what was going to happen for the end of my life, and I guess it’s because I had a great-aunt whose husband died early on — at 50 — and she asked people to come and stay at her house. She called it “a room with a broom.” And my family went to stay there in the summers. And she had friends all year-round — that she lived to be 101. And she has always been that mentor to me, and she believed that you have to have friends and meaningful work through your whole life.</p> <p>And I have this idea that it should be a working commune, set up like the missions in California, with a big inner courtyard and rooms around the perimeter that go into the courtyard or out into the world. And that the front part could be actually a business. My latest fantasy is to have it be a <em>tortilleria</em>. I want a printing press where we print the news of the movement and wrap the hot tortillas in the papers of the press so that you would really take that home and learn about all the varietals of corn. Maybe it’s a work of art that’s on the papers that we’d print. Or maybe it’s some photograph of somebody — a farmer someplace. And we could curate that as part of the project. We, as the elders, could help to curate that newspaper, if you will. And maybe the tortillas themselves would go directly to the schools.</p> <p><strong>Some of us were taught that we should eat to live and not live to eat. What do you think a better motto would be? </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: I keep thinking about what meaningful work is, because we’re missing that in our culture. We’re missing the idea that every day you could be doing something that really is meaningful to yourself. And I think food — making food — can give that to you. I would like us to become a nation of farmers again. I think we all need that, as Thomas Jefferson believed, because the land teaches us the values that we need to survive and to flourish.</p> <p><strong>And everyone contributes and no one’s alone. </strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: Exactly. That we could always count on friends to eat together. I think loneliness and meaningless work are the real issues of this country that we don’t talk about it. One in two people is divorced, and it’s so hard for families to stay together. We need to think about what happens when we get older.</p> <p><strong>And food is the way?</strong></p> <p>Alice Waters: It is. And so many people are sick because of the food they eat. But food can make you well.</p> <p><strong>Well, thank you for talking with us. It’s been wonderful.</strong></p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">Alice Waters Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>18 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.51710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-Waters-Opening-Night-Chez-Panisse.jpg" data-image-caption="In 1971, Alice Waters, at the age of 27, and UC Berkeley comparative literature professor Paul Aratow open their pioneering restaurant, Chez Panisse, in an arts and crafts house along Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley." data-image-copyright="wp-Waters-Opening-Night-Chez-Panisse" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-Waters-Opening-Night-Chez-Panisse-380x197.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-Waters-Opening-Night-Chez-Panisse-760x393.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.73157894736842" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Cafe-Cookbook-Alice-Waters-1.jpg" data-image-caption="1999: (left) Alice Waters at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market; (right) Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook by Alice L. Waters. In this cookbook, the follow-up to the award-winning Chez Panisse Vegetables, Alice Waters and her team of talented cooks offer 140 of the café’s best-recipes—some that have been on the menu since the day café opened and others reinvented with the honesty and ingenuity that have made Chez Panisse so famous. (Photo: Morrow Cookbooks)" data-image-copyright="Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook - Alice Waters-1" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Cafe-Cookbook-Alice-Waters-1-380x278.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Cafe-Cookbook-Alice-Waters-1-760x556.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66578947368421" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-493097526.jpg" data-image-caption="October 17, 2015: Alice Waters with her daughter and co-author of MY PANTRY: HOMEMADE INGREDIENTS THAT MAKE SIMPLE MEALS YOUR OWN, Fanny Singer, attend TimesTalks at TheTimesCenter in New York City. (Ron Adar/Getty)" data-image-copyright="TimesTalks Alice Waters" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-493097526-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-493097526-760x506.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68289473684211" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-635238019.jpg" data-image-caption="1982: Chef Alice Waters stands with other chefs in the kitchen of her restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley. (© Getty)" data-image-copyright="Chef Alice Waters" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-635238019-380x259.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-635238019-760x519.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.384335154827" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Vegetables-Alice-Waters-1.jpg" data-image-caption="1996: Chez Panisse Vegetables by Alice L. Waters. Waters and her friends at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California have dedicated themselves to the ideal of serving the finest, freshest foods with simplicity and style. From tender baby asparagus in early spring, to the colorful spectrum of peppers at the height of summer; crisp, leafy chicories in autumn, to sweet butternut squash in the dark of winter, much of the inspiration about what to put on the menu comes from the high quality produce Waters and her chefs seek out year-round. (Photo credit: Morrow Cookbooks)" data-image-copyright="Chez-Panisse-Vegetables---Alice-Waters-1" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Vegetables-Alice-Waters-1-274x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Chez-Panisse-Vegetables-Alice-Waters-1-549x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68026315789474" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395323.jpg" data-image-caption="1982: Alice Waters with Chez Panisse chefs and staff in front of the restaurant in Berkeley, California. (Susan Wood)" data-image-copyright="Waters &amp; Chez Panisse Staff" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395323-380x258.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395323-760x517.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67763157894737" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153396994.jpg" data-image-caption="1982: Chef and restaurateur Alice Waters in her restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, California. (Susan Wood/Getty)" data-image-copyright="Waters In Chez Panisse" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153396994-380x258.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153396994-760x515.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66315789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1989-wp-GettyImages-50591174.jpg" data-image-caption="1989: Chef Alice Waters holding organically grown vegetables. (John Dominis/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty)" data-image-copyright="Alice Waters" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1989-wp-GettyImages-50591174-380x252.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1989-wp-GettyImages-50591174-760x504.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4757281553398" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2005-GettyImages-56115917.jpg" data-image-caption="November 7, 2005: Chef, author, and food activist Alice Waters discusses the Edible Schoolyard Project with Charles, Prince of Wales, at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California. (D. Ross Cameron-Pool and Getty)" data-image-copyright="Prince Of Wales & Duchess Of Cornwall US Visit - Day 7" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2005-GettyImages-56115917-257x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2005-GettyImages-56115917-515x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3893967093236" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/9780670016662.jpg" data-image-caption="2016: FANNY IN FRANCE: TRAVEL ADVENTURES OF A CHEF'S DAUGHTER, WITH RECIPES by Alice Waters is a treat for anyone who loves France, food, adventure—or all three! FANNY IN FRANCE is also a beginner’s cookbook with simple, French-inspired recipes that encourage children and adults anywhere to cook and share delicious snacks and meals with family and friends using basic methods and the most sustainable ingredients. (Credit: Penguin Random House)" data-image-copyright="9780670016662" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/9780670016662-273x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/9780670016662-547x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2008-GettyImages-106200573.jpg" data-image-caption="October 31, 2008: Alice Waters attends Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project’s “Hulaween.” (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="13th Annual Bette Midler Presents New York Restoration Project's "Hulaween"" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2008-GettyImages-106200573-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2008-GettyImages-106200573-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3333333333333" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2010-In-the-Green-Kitchen.jpg" data-image-caption="2010: IN THE GREEN KITCHEN: TECHNIQUES TO LEARN BY HEART, by Alice Waters, presents essential cooking techniques. (Penguin)" data-image-copyright="2010-In the Green Kitchen" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2010-In-the-Green-Kitchen-285x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/2010-In-the-Green-Kitchen-570x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.65921052631579" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-487628256.jpg" data-image-caption="September 10, 2015: President Barack Obama presents the 2014 National Humanities Medal to Alice Waters in a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington, D.C. Alice Waters was honored for celebrating the bond between the ethical and the edible as a chef, author, and advocate. (Photo by Alex Wong and Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Obama Presents National Medal Of Arts And National Humanities Medal At White House" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-487628256-380x251.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/wp-2015-GettyImages-487628256-760x501.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4785992217899" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Coming-To-My-Senses.jpg" data-image-caption="2018: COMING TO MY SENSES; THE MAKING OF A COUNTERCULTURE COOK by Alice Waters. In her memoir, Waters recalls the circuitous road and tumultuous times leading to the opening of America’s most influential restaurant. (Penguin)" data-image-copyright="Coming To My Senses" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Coming-To-My-Senses-257x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Coming-To-My-Senses-514x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67236842105263" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1969-Alice-Waters-Montessori-School-Teacher-in-Berkeley-CA.jpg" data-image-caption="1969: Alice Waters teaching at a Montessori school. Waters graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967, with a degree in French cultural studies, before training at the International Montessori School in London." data-image-copyright="1969 Alice Waters Montessori School Teacher in Berkeley CA" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1969-Alice-Waters-Montessori-School-Teacher-in-Berkeley-CA-380x255.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1969-Alice-Waters-Montessori-School-Teacher-in-Berkeley-CA-760x511.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MN-AP668_WATERS_8S_20170925172457.jpg" data-image-caption="1950s: Alice Waters dressed in a cowboy outfit with her three sisters at Christmas in New Jersey. (© Alice Waters)" data-image-copyright="MN-AP668_WATERS_8S_20170925172457" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MN-AP668_WATERS_8S_20170925172457-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/MN-AP668_WATERS_8S_20170925172457.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5079365079365" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-515138642.jpg" data-image-caption="1982: Alice Waters with the CHEZ PANISSE MENU COOKBOOK, filled with the restaurant’s best menus and transformations of classic French dishes. Waters says there’s “not a single person” who can resist her bouillabaisse. (Getty Images)" data-image-copyright="Alice Waters Posing with Her Cookbook" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-515138642-252x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-515138642-504x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4448669201521" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395423.jpg" data-image-caption="1982: Alice Waters at a farm in the Sonoma Valley that provides goats’ cheese to Chez Panisse. (Susan Wood/Getty)" data-image-copyright="Waters Visits A Goat Farm" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395423-263x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2019/06/1982-wp-GettyImages-153395423-526x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i class="icon-icon_twitter-circle"></i></a></li>  <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-email" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever via Email"><i class="icon-icon_email-circle"></i></a></li> </ul> <time class="editorial-article__last-updated sans-6">This page last revised on February 11, 2021</time> <div class="sans-4"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/how-to-cite" target="_blank">How to cite this page</a></div> </footer> </div> <div class="container"> <div class="col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <iframe src="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942if_/https://embed.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/alice-waters-a-love-affair-with-food/id1025864075?i=1000441764595&itsct=podcast_box&itscg=30200" height="175px" frameborder="0" sandbox="allow-forms allow-popups allow-same-origin allow-scripts allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation" allow="autoplay *; encrypted-media *;" style="width: 100%; overflow: hidden; border-top-left-radius: 10px; border-top-right-radius: 10px; border-bottom-right-radius: 10px; border-bottom-left-radius: 10px; background-color: transparent; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial;"></iframe> </div> </div> <div class="container interview-related-achievers"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <footer class="clearfix small-blocks text-xs-center"> <h3 class="m-b-3 serif-3">If you are inspired by this achiever’s story, you might also enjoy:</h3> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration science-exploration science-exploration small-town-rural-upbringing analytical athletic help-mankind " data-year-inducted="1971" data-achiever-name="Borlaug"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/bor0-001a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/bor0-001a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Nobel Prize for Peace</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1971</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts ambitious resourceful make-films write " data-year-inducted="1994" data-achiever-name="Coppola"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/coppola-017a-1-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/10/coppola-017a-1-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Francis Ford Coppola</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Filmmaker, Producer and Screenwriter</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1994</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts the-arts ambitious curious build-or-create-things write make-films resourceful " data-year-inducted="2007" data-achiever-name="Ephron"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/eph0-001a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/eph0-001a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Nora Ephron</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Humorist, Screenwriter and Director</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2007</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever business build-or-create-things difficulty-with-school ambitious start-a-business " data-year-inducted="2014" data-achiever-name="Keller"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/kel0-001a-2-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/02/kel0-001a-2-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Thomas Keller</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Culinary Impresario</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2014</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever business ambitious imprisonment-persecution start-a-business teach-others build-or-create-things curious " data-year-inducted="1995" data-achiever-name="Stewart"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/stewart-013a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/10/stewart-013a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Martha Stewart</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Multimedia Lifestyle Entrepreneur</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1995</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever science-exploration curious pioneer work-in-medicine " data-year-inducted="1998" data-achiever-name="Weil"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/andrew-weil-m-d/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/weil_760_ac-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/10/weil_760_ac-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Andrew Weil, M.D.</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Father of Integrative Medicine</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">1998</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </div> </div> </article> <div class="modal image-modal" id="imageModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="imageModal" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="close-container"> <div class="close icon-icon_x" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close"></div> </div> <div class="modal-dialog" role="document"> <div class="modal-content"> <div class="modal-body"> <figure class="image-modal__container"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <img class="image-modal__image" src="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/" alt=""/>  <figcaption class="p-t-2 container"> <div class="image-modal__caption sans-2 text-white"></div>  </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </div> </div> </div> </div> </main> </div> </div> <footer class="content-info main-footer bg-black"> <div class="container"> <div class="find-achiever" id="find-achiever-list"> <div class="form-group"> <input id="find-achiever-input" class="search js-focus" placeholder="Search for an achiever"/> <i class="icon-icon_chevron-down"></i> </div> <ul class="find-achiever-list list m-b-0 list-unstyled"> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/hank-aaron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hank Aaron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/kareem-abdul-jabbar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/lynsey-addario/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynsey Addario</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-albee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Albee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/tenley-albright-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tenley Albright, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/svetlana-alexievich/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Svetlana Alexievich</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/julie-andrews/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Julie Andrews</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-angelou/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Angelou</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/frances-h-arnold-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frances H. Arnold, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-d-ballard-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert D. Ballard, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-roger-bannister-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Roger Bannister</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-banville/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Banville</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ehud-barak/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ehud Barak</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/lee-r-berger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lee R. Berger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-timothy-berners-lee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Tim Berners-Lee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/yogi-berra/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Yogi Berra</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/jeffrey-p-bezos/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeffrey P. Bezos</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/benazir-bhutto/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benazir Bhutto</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/simone-biles/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Simone Biles</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/keith-l-black/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Keith L. Black, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/elizabeth-blackburn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elizabeth Blackburn, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-boies-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Boies</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-e-borlaug/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman E. Borlaug, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-c-bradlee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin C. Bradlee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sergey-brin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sergey Brin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/carter-j-brown/"><span class="achiever-list-name">J. Carter Brown</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/linda-buck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linda B. Buck, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/carol-burnett/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Burnett</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-h-w-bush/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George H. W. Bush</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/susan-butcher/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Susan Butcher</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-michael-caine/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Michael Caine</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-cameron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Cameron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/benjamin-s-carson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Benjamin S. Carson, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Carter</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-cash/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Cash</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William J. Clinton</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/francis-s-collins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/denton-a-cooley/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Denton A. Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-doubilet/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Doubilet</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/jennifer-a-doudna-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jennifer A. Doudna, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-s-fauci-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/aretha-franklin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Aretha Franklin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/peter-gabriel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peter Gabriel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/leymah-gbowee/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leymah Gbowee</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol W. Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-john-gurdon/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir John Gurdon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/paul-b-maccready-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul B. MacCready, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/reinhold-messner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reinhold Messner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/lynn-nottage/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lynn Nottage</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. Ride, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/cal-ripken-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Cal Ripken Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonny-rollins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonny Rollins</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/anthony-romero/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony D. Romero</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-rosenquist/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Rosenquist</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/martine-rothblatt-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/pete-rozelle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pete Rozelle</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/bill-russell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bill Russell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/albie-sachs/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Albie Sachs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/oliver-sacks-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oliver Sacks, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/jonas-salk-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jonas Salk, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-sanger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick Sanger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/george-b-schaller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George B. Schaller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/barry-scheck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Barry Scheck</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/richard-evans-schultes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard Evans Schultes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-h-norman-schwarzkopf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-schwarzman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen A. Schwarzman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/glenn-t-seaborg-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Glenn T. Seaborg, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/neil-sheehan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Neil Sheehan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-alan-shepard-jr/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral Alan B. Shepard, Jr., USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ellen-johnson-sirleaf/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ellen Johnson Sirleaf</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/carlos-slim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Slim Helú</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/frederick-w-smith/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frederick W. Smith</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/stephen-sondheim/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Sondheim</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/sonia-sotomayor/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sonia Sotomayor</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/wole-soyinka/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wole Soyinka</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/esperanza-spalding/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Esperanza Spalding</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/martha-stewart/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Martha Stewart</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/admiral-james-b-stockdale/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral James B. Stockdale, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/hilary-swank/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Hilary Swank</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/amy-tan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Amy Tan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/dame-kiri-te-kanawa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Kiri Te Kanawa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-teller-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward Teller, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/twyla-tharp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Twyla Tharp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/wayne-thiebaud/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wayne Thiebaud</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/lt-michael-e-thornton-usn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Michael E. Thornton, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/clyde-tombaugh/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Clyde Tombaugh</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/charles-h-townes-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Charles H. Townes, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/david-trimble/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord David Trimble</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/ted-turner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert Edward (Ted) Turner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/desmond-tutu/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Archbishop Desmond Tutu</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-updike/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Updike</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/gore-vidal/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gore Vidal</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/antonio-villaraigosa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Antonio Villaraigosa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/lech-walesa/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lech Walesa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/herschel-walker/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Herschel Walker</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/alice-waters/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Alice Waters</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/james-d-watson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James D. Watson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/andrew-weil-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew Weil, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/leslie-h-wexner/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leslie H. Wexner</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/elie-wiesel/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Elie Wiesel</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/edward-o-wilson-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/oprah-winfrey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Oprah Winfrey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/tom-wolfe/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tom Wolfe</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/john-wooden/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Wooden</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/bob-woodward/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Bob Woodward</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/shinya-yamanaka-m-d-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shinya Yamanaka, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/general-chuck-yeager/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Chuck Yeager, USAF</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/andrew-young/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Andrew J. Young</span></a> </li> </ul> <div class="list__close"></div> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 col-lg-3"> <ul id="menu-footer-menu-col-1" class="menu list-unstyled"><li class="menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-our-history"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/">Our History</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-about-the-academy"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/">About the Academy</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-academy-patrons"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/patrons/">Academy Patrons</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-delegate-alumni"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/alumni/">Delegate Alumni</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-directors-our-team"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/director-staff/">Directors & Our Team</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-golden-plate-awards-council"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/awards-council/">Golden Plate Awards Council</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-golden-plate-awardees"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/our-history/golden-plate-awards/">Golden Plate Awardees</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 col-lg-3"> <ul id="menu-footer-menu-col-2" class="menu list-unstyled"><li class="active menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-our-members"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/">Our Members</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-the-arts"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.the-arts">The Arts</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-business"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.business">Business</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-science-exploration"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.science-exploration">Science & Exploration</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-public-service"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.public-service">Public Service</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-sports"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.sports">Sports</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-achiever-universe"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/universe/">Achiever Universe</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 col-lg-3"> <ul id="menu-footer-menu-col-3" class="menu list-unstyled"><li class="menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-keys-to-success"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/">Keys to Success</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-keys-to-success"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/keys-to-success/">Keys to Success</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-find-my-role-model"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/find-my-role-model/">Find My Role Model</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-recommended-books"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/recommended-books/">Recommended Books</a></li> </ul> </li> <li class="menu-item menu-item-has-children menu-the-summit"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/">The Summit</a> <ul class="sub-menu"> <li class="menu-item menu-overview"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit/">Overview</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-summit-by-year"><a href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/summit#years">Summit by Year</a></li> </ul> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="col-sm-6 col-lg-3"> <div class="row"> <div class="menu-item-has-children"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://itunes.apple.com/us/institution/academy-of-achievement/id389592299" target="_blank"> More from the Academy </a> </div> <ul class="list-unstyled more-from-academy-menu clearfix"> <li> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> <figure class="podcast clearfix"> <img class="podcast__image" src="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/what-it-takes-square@1x.jpg" alt="What It Takes Podcast"/> <figcaption class="podcast__title"><div>Podcast</div></figcaption> </figure> </a> </li> <li> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://books.apple.com/us/author/academy-of-achievement/id511555796" target="_blank"> <figure class="podcast clearfix"> <img class="podcast__image" src="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/itunes-u-square@1x.jpg" alt="iTunes U"/> <figcaption class="podcast__title"><div>Apple Books</div></figcaption> </figure> </a> </li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </footer> <footer class="bottom-footer p-t-3 p-b-3 text-xs-center text-lg-left"> <div class="container"> <div class="row"> <div class="col-lg-1 p-a-0"> <img width="95" height="92" src="/web/20210905051942im_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/eagle-footer@2x.png" alt="Academy of Achievement"/> </div> <div class="col-lg-7 col-lg-offset-1 p-t-1"> <div class="serif-6 text-white">© 1996 - 2021 American Academy of Achievement. All Rights Reserved.</div> <ul id="menu-bottom-footer" class="menu list-unstyled menu-bottom-footer m-b-0"><li class="menu-item menu-underwriter"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/underwriter/">Underwriter</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-contact-us"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/contact-us/">Contact Us</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-frequently-asked-questions"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/frequently-asked-questions/">Frequently Asked Questions</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-privacy-policy"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/privacy-policy/">Privacy Policy</a></li> <li class="menu-item menu-usage-policy"><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/usage-policy/">Usage Policy</a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div> </footer>  <div class="modal search-modal" id="searchModal" tabindex="-1" role="dialog" aria-labelledby="searchModal" aria-hidden="true"> <div class="close-container"> <div class="close icon-icon_x" data-dismiss="modal" aria-label="Close"></div> </div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="modal-dialog" role="document"> <div class="modal-content"> <div class="modal-body"> <form action="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/" method="get" class="search-form input-group"> <input autofocus type="search" name="s" id="search" class="form-control transparent-input serif-3 text-white" placeholder="Let us help you find something" autocomplete="off" value=""/> <button class="submit" type="submit"><i class="icon-icon_search"></i></button> </form> </div> <footer class="m-t-2"> <a class="sans-4" href="/web/20210905051942/https://achievement.org/achiever">View the full list of achievers</a> </footer> </div> </div> </div> </div> </div> <script src="/web/20210905051942js_/https://achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/dist/scripts/main-e23e5149de.js" id="sage/js-js"></script>  </body> </html>

CINXE.COM

Alice Waters | Academy of Achievement