Our Guests

Joined Oxfam America as its president in 2017. She brings over twenty-five years of experience in international humanitarian relief and development to her new post. Prior to joining Oxfam, she served as Deputy Secretary General of CARE International in Geneva, providing leadership of the Secretariat and across the CARE confederation. She previously served as Vice President of International Programs & Operations for CARE, overseeing regional management units and their country offices in East & Central, West and Southern Africa; Latin America & the Caribbean; Asia; and the Middle East/Europe and in regional and country leadership and management roles since 1995. Prior to CARE, Maxman worked with the U.S. Peace Corps, German Agency for Technical Cooperation, UN World Food Programme, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has a Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from Colorado College and a Master of International Administration from The School for International Training in Brattleboro, Vermont.

Executive director for the DC region of Teach For America. Adele graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1999. Her teaching career began as a corps member of Teach For America working with second graders in the South Bronx of New York. After earning her Masters in Educational Leadership from Teachers College at Columbia University in 2004, Adele led instructional and school design for high school students through several non-profit organizations. Adele served as the founding principal of an alternative high school in Brooklyn, New York. As the Deputy Chief of Youth Engagement at DC Public Schools, Adele oversaw policy and program for the district’s most under-served populations. In 2015, Adele joined Teach For America’s D.C. Region as the Executive Director and graduated with a Doctorate in Education. Her dissertation focused on student-centered school district leadership.

Graduated from both Harvard College and Harvard Law School before detouring from a legal career to found the non-profit City Year, which served as the model for the Americorps Program. Alan currently serves as the Founder and CEO of Be The Change, Inc., a movement building organization which creates bipartisan national campaigns to affect public policy and culture by organizing coalitions of nonprofits, social entrepreneurs, policymakers, private sector leaders, academics, and citizens.

Considered a rising star on the DC restaurant scene. He is the chef and owner of Lucky Buns and Duke’s Grocery in Washington DC as well as the pop-up Alfies. He brings a combination of culinary chops, passion for travel, business skill and charm to his restaurants. He is a self-taught chef who started working in restaurants as a teenager, became an executive chef in his 20s, and opened his own restaurant before turning 30.

Ali Noorani is the Executive Director of the National Immigration Forum, a non-partisan advocacy organization working with faith, law enforcement and business leaders to promote the value of immigrants and immigration. Noorani provides a principled and reasoned voice on immigration policy and politics, and has appeared on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NBC News, ABC News, PBS NewsHour and various radio and local news programs. Noorani is an Emerson Dial Fellow, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, holds a Master’s in Public Health from Boston University and is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Washington DC and is the author of “There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration,” (Prometheus, April 2017) and host of the “Only in America” podcast.

Alice Waters is a chef, author, food activist, and the founder and owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant in Berkeley, California. She has been a champion of local sustainable agriculture for over four decades. In 1995 she founded the Edible Schoolyard Project, which advocates for a free organic school lunch for all children and a sustainable food curriculum in every public school. She has been Vice President of Slow Food International since 2002. She conceived and helped create the Yale Sustainable Food Project in 2003, and the Rome Sustainable Food Project at the American Academy in Rome in 2007. In 2015 she was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Obama. Alice is the author of fifteen books, including New York Times bestsellers The Art of Simple Food I & II, The Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea, and, a memoir, Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook.