With a career that started in the legal field, including a stint at the White House, Adrian Miller pivoted to follow his passion for soul food—and has turned that into a celebrated career. In this episode of BS: Beyond Stereotypes, Merle Vaughn sits down with Adrian, a “soul food scholar,” James Beard award winner, and a voice for social justice, to “dish” on the importance of relationships, kindness, and the complex layers of Juneteenth.
Adrian Miller received an A.B in International Relations from Stanford University and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center. From 1999 to 2001, he served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton with his Initiative for One America – the first free-standing office in the White House to address issues of racial, religious, and ethnic reconciliation. Adrian went on to serve as a senior policy analyst for Colorado Governor Bill Ritter Jr. From 2004 to 2010, he served on the board for the Southern Foodways Alliance. In June 2019, Adrian lectured in the Masters of Gastronomy program at the Università di Scienze Gastronomiche (nicknamed the “Slow Food University”) in Pollenzo, Italy. He is currently the executive director of the Colorado Council of Churches and, as such, is the first African American, and the first layperson, to hold that position.
His first book, Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, won the James Beard Foundation Award for Scholarship and Reference in 2014. His second book, The President’s Kitchen Cabinet: The Story of the African Americans Who Have Fed Our First Families, From the Washingtons to the Obamas, was published on President’s Day 2017. It was a finalist for a 2018 NAACP Image Award for “Outstanding Literary Work – Non-Fiction” and the 2018 Colorado Book Award for History. Adrian’s third book, Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue, was published Spring 2021.
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