Tanya Steel is the Executive Director of Careers Through Culinary Arts Program and the Award Director for the Julia Child Award.
She conceived and helped produce both Canada’s three-year initiative Kid Food Nation, and the Healthy Lunchtime Challenge & Kids’ “State Dinner” with First Lady Michelle Obama. This annual White House competition and event occurred for five years (2012-2016) and Steel was honored to give speeches four times at the White House podium in the East Room, alongside Ms. Obama.
She was the Executive Director of the International Association of Culinary Professionals; an Adjunct Professor at NYU; the former Editorial Director of Epicurious, Gourmet Live, and Gourmet.com; was an editor at Bon Appetit and Food & Wine, and wrote for The New York Times for four years. She authored Food Fight: A Mouthwatering History of Who Ate What & Why Through the Ages and The Epicurious Cookbook, and co-wrote the award-winning Real Food for Healthy Kids. She’s a member of the National Museum of American History’s Kitchen Cabinet.
Inducted into the Digital Hall of Fame, she’s won Webbys, ASMEs, James Beards, and an Emmy. She was recently named a Social Impact leader by the New York Observer.
She has appeared on dozens of television shows, including the Today Show, CBS The Early Show, Hell’s Kitchen, Iron Chef, The View, Master Chef, Chef’s Table, and dozens of others.
She is involved with the Brain Health Initiative, was a support group volunteer for the Association of Frontal Temporal Degeneration, and is a founding member of Cure MAPT FTD. Her husband, Robert Steel, a beloved high school history teacher, passed away in 2019 from Frontotemporal Dementia caused by the MAPT genetic mutation. She is the proud mother of two sons.
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