Uploaded August 2022 | Updated September 2026, 16 hours ago
The Leadership Awards recognize specific outstanding initiatives as well as bodies of work and lifetime achievement. Excellence of work, innovation in approach, and scale of impact within a community or the nation are among the criteria used to select the recipients. Honorees are chosen by a volunteer committee of experts and the cohort of past Leadership Award recipients. The Foundation awarded a $10,000 cash prize to each honoree.
Mavis-Jay Sanders is the director of culinary development and education at Drive Change, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support formerly incarcerated young people through quality employment in the food and hospitality industry. Mavis-Jay—a James Beard Chef’s Bootcamp alumni and an advisory committee member of the James Beard House Fellows program—is a chef who believes in sustainably raised and thoughtfully prepared ingredients, as well as a racial equity advocate who has dedicated her career to fighting for food justice in Black and low-income communities.
Learn more about Mavis-Jay here: bit.ly/3An8MPU
The Leadership Awards recognize specific outstanding initiatives as well as bodies of work and lifetime achievement. Excellence of work, innovation in approach, and scale of impact within a community or the nation are among the criteria used to select the recipients. Honorees are chosen by a volunteer committee of experts and the cohort of past Leadership Award recipients. The Foundation awarded a $10,000 cash prize to each honoree.
Mavis-Jay Sanders is the director of culinary development and education at Drive Change, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to support formerly incarcerated young people through quality employment in the food and hospitality industry. Mavis-Jay—a James Beard Chef’s Bootcamp alumni and an advisory committee member of the James Beard House Fellows program—is a chef who believes in sustainably raised and thoughtfully prepared ingredients, as well as a racial equity advocate who has dedicated her career to fighting for food justice in Black and low-income communities.
Learn more about Mavis-Jay here: bit.ly/3An8MPU
