For as long as he can remember Eric Weiner wanted to be a foreign correspondent. So he could hardly believe his good fortune when, one day in 1993, NPR dispatched him to India as the network’s first full-time correspondent in that country. Weiner spent two of the best years of his life based in New Delhi, covering everything from an outbreak of bubonic plague to India’s economic reforms, before moving on to other postings in Jerusalem and Tokyo.

Over the past decade, he’s reported from more than 30 countries, most of them profoundly unhappy. He traveled to Iraq several times during the reign of Saddam Hussein. He was in Afghanistan in 2001, when the Taliban regime fell.

He’s also served as a correspondent for NPR in New York, Miami and Washington, D.C. Weiner is a former reporter for The New York Times and was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He was part of a team of NPR reporters that won a 1994 Peabody award for a series of investigative reports about the U.S. tobacco industry.

His commentary has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Slate and The New Republic, among other publications. He is author of the New York Times bestseller The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World .

Owen Thomson is lead bartender at Café Atlántico, José Andrés pioneering Nuevo Latino restaurant in the Penn Quarter neighborhood of Washington, DC. Thomson oversees the bar at Café Atlántico and is responsible for the development of new drinks. In the spring of 2010, Thomson introduced the “Farm to Glass” cocktail, a weekly concoction based on seasonal ingredients purchased at the Penn Quarter FRESHFARM Market. His bar program at Café Atlántico has been featured in Imbibe, Washington Post, and several industry journals.

For the four years prior to joining Café Atlantico, Thomson ran the bar program at Bourbon in Washington, DC a high volume neighborhood bar with a selection of over 200 whiskies and a focus on craft cocktails. His bar program at Bourbon was written up in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Wine Enthusiast, DC Modern Luxury and various other publications.

During that time, Thomson helped found the DC Craft Bartenders Guild, an organization dedicated to fostering a craft cocktail culture in Washington DC. The group stages contests and events such as the annual Rickey competition in July and D.C.’s Repeal Day Ball in an effort to highlight and nurture local talent. Thomson has been President of the Guild since its creation in 2008.

Thomson also owned and operated the roving speakeasy Hummingbird to Mars with fellow bartenders, Derek Brown and Justin Guthrie.

Recognizing Thomson’s cocktail making skills and his passion for innovation, St. Germain asked him to become a local brand ambassador in 2010.

A native Washingtonian, Thomson has worked in the hospitality industry since he was 17. He earned a BA in Archaeology from Dickinson College and studied law at the University of South Carolina and University of the District of Columbia.

Already a star chef when he opened Equinox, Todd Gray is a top culinary talent in the nation’s capital and an avid promoter of local, seasonal mid-Atlantic foods. Known for breathing new life into historical recipes, Gray developed Equinox’s distinct cuisine, enhancing Virginia-Piedmont ingredients and recipes with his classical training. His refined taste, stellar reputation and high standards landed him the culinary director position with BET co-founder Shelia Johnson’s Salamander Hospitality. There he is overseeing development and implementation of an elegant menu of regional Virginia specialty dishes for the 340-acre Salamander Resort & Spa, slated to open in Middleburg, Virginia in 2011.

Gray has earned many awards for his artistry and inspired menu combinations, including the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington’s (RAMW) 2008 award for Best Fine Dining; five nominations for the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic award and eight nominations for RAMW’s Chef of the Year. Other honors include top ratings in the ZAGAT Guide Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence ten years in a row and numerous Awards of Excellence from the Distinguished Restaurants of North America.

Gray’s strong background in classical French and Italian techniques and proclivity for invention have also made him a popular teacher. Over the years, he has conducted cooking classes for youngsters and their families, including his recent initiative with the Murch school, as a early leading advocate of Michelle Obama’s ‘Chefs Move to Schools’ program. In 2010 Gray was hand-selected by The First Lady, Michelle Obama and White House Policy Advisory Chef Sam Kass to address a meeting of chefs with the First Lady from across the nation at The White House regarding his success with this program and the future of our children’s diet through education about food, health and nutrition. Gray has become a magnet and mentor to apprentices climbing the culinary ladder as well; in 2010 he was named Mentor of the Year by Star Chefs.Today, some of his former students are among top area chefs. Gray is also a leader and champion in support of humanely raised and slaughtered animals and works with local farmers to develop food of all varieties from custom-grown beef to fresh, organic produce.

Raised in Virginia, Gray studied at the University of Richmond, and graduated with honors from the Culinary Institute of America. Upon graduation, he worked in and staged with a number of fine dining restaurants including Galileo with Roberto Donna, Jean Louis at the Watergate and at Daniel with Chef Baloud where he honed his craft, philosophy and technique as one of the nation’s top chefs. Chef Gray has appeared on numerous television shows including a guest judge on Top Chef and Tyler Florence’s Food Network show; Tyler’s Ultimate

The Gray’s will open their second location, Todd Gray’s Watershed, in DC in April 2011.

Chef Frederik De Pue is known throughout Washington DC’s dynamic food scene as an international trendsetter. He translates his global culinary experience through an eclectic, yet approachable menu at Smith Commons.

Born and raised in Belgium, Chef Frederik trained at the Hotel School Ter Duinen and worked at several top European restaurants. He worked under Chef Alain Ducasse at Louis XV and later became Sous Chef at Alain Chapel. In 1998, at age 21, he joined Yves Mattagne’s Sea Grill in Brussels and worked there for three years. In 2001, he traveled to Washington, DC to become the Executive Chef of the European Commission Delegation Ambassador. Chef Frederik was highly praised in the diplomatic circles where he would spend the next five years creating one of the most exceptional dining tables in the Embassy world.

Quickly inspired by his impressive guests, Chef Frederik recognized the opportunity to expand beyond DC’s Embassy Row. In 2007, he launched 42˚ Catering, naming the company after the 42nd parallel that connects many of the greatest gastronomic cities in the world. Since then, 42˚ Catering has served events ranging in size from intimate dinner parties to lavish society extravaganzas. Chef Frederik’s passion in the kitchen pushes him to find perfection in every dish he creates.

The former Frugal Traveler columnist for the New York Times, Matt Gross now writes the “Getting Lost” series for the paper, the “Voyager” column for GetCurrency.com, and various other stories for Saveur and Afar magazines. Along with two other journalists, he also writes about parenting at DadWagon.com. Born in Concord, Massachusetts, and raised up and down the eastern seaboard, he now lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Jean, and daughter, Sasha.

Defying much of his formal photography training from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles, Jonas Lara has made a career tilting his camera towards the unconventional terrain of urban landscapes.

Lara strongly believes he shares a visual language with architects, engineers, painters and other artists who challenge the conventionality of gravity and space.

His fascination for and collaboration with other artists is evident in his emerging artist portrait series and his extensive portfolio of architectural photography. Lara’s camera has pointed its unique angled lens at structures on behalf of such clients as Escher Gunewardena, Patrick Tighe as well as Nike. He is now based in New York City.

Genevieve Erin O’Brien is a Vietnamese/Irish/American artist, culinary adventurer, community organizer, and popular educator. O’Brien lives and works in Los Angeles and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

She holds an MFA in Studio Art/Performance from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has recently been conducting research for a new body of art work in Vietnam as a Fulbright Fellow in 2009. O’Brien uses performance, video and installation to explore notions of “home” and “homeland”. As a mixed race child of Vietnamese immigrant mother and an Irish-American father, she investigates issues such as war and memory, transnational identity and belonging, and multiple identities and its attendant baggage. Using food, humor, narrative and conceptual structures, she develops work that is invested in collective healing from trauma, whether personal or inherited to further social justice and cultural understanding.

In 2008, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago presented O’Brien’s conceptual performance, Peace Salon as part of the 12×12 series showcasing emerging artists. Her conceptual and durational performances, as well as installations and videos have been presented at galleries and public venues in numerous cities including Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and across the US in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC.

Called a “modern day Virgil” by the LA Weekly, O’Brien’s one woman shows address hate crimes, homophobia, and violence against women, with sensitivity and humor. As a community activist and popular educator, O’Brien has developed programs for Sisterfire, Southern Californians for Youth, the UCLA Labor Center’s Summer Internship Program, and APALA (Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance). She was a founding member of Arts In Action, a political and cultural arts collective space in the heart of Los Angeles.

Amanda Hesser is a co-founder of cooking site food52.com. She has been a food columnist and editor at the New York Times for more than a decade, and currently writes Recipe Redux for the Sunday Magazine. Hesser has written two award-winning books — The Cook and the Gardener and Cooking for Mr. Latte — and edited the New York Times Magazines published collection of food essays, Eat, Memory. Her most recent book is The Essential New York Times Cookbook, a compilation of recipes from the New York Times going back to the 1850′s. Hesser is also a founder of Plodt.com.

Lifting Voices is a nonprofit organization in Washington DC dedicated to empowering underserved youth through creative writing. These tools of expression allow them to improve their ability to read, write, think critically, and value themselves in productive ways.

Iowa native Jared Boller was introduced to bartending in 2004 while studying abroad in Costa Rica. Drawn to the beach bum lifestyle of Central America, Boller found his love within the hospitality industry, as he met new people and practiced his Spanish while slinging drinks along the coast. Finding passion in travel as well as bartending, Boller graduated from the University of Iowa in 2005 and began working fulltime in both front and back of house positions in a premiere Iowa City restaurant to support his travel habit. After traveling through Asia, with stops in Nepal and Thailand along the way, Boller landed in Vail, Colorado where he began to seriously hone his signature improvisational style behind the bar.

In the spring of 2007, Boller made the move to Denver where he began creating seasonal cocktail menus for Ocean and Nine75, where he met then-Executive Chef Troy Guard, whose own love of inventive, whimsical and seasonally inspired food matched perfectly with Boller’s fresh-faced improvisational style. When Guard decided to open his own restaurant, TAG, in downtown Denver, Boller joined him and created award-winning handcrafted cocktails inspired by Guard’s continental cuisine.

Ever the constant traveler, Boller packed his bags and made the move to New York City in the summer of 2010 to further develop and hone his craft. In less than two months, Boller helped open the much anticipated Lani Kai — Julie Reiner’s modern tropically themed bar — in the SoHo district of Manhattan.

Boller’s creativity, passion and humility behind the bar is evidenced in his growing list of accolades. He has taken first place and been a regional finalist in over a dozen competitions and in 2008, Boller took second place in the prestigious 42Below Cocktail World Cup in New Zealand. His work has taken him all over the globe and his cocktails have appeared in USA Today, Denver Magazine, Bar & Nightlife Magazine, The Denver Post, Fox Business News, Fox Morning News as well as the CBS Morning News.

Derek Brown is a self-described booze nerd; his love of bartending stems as much from books, maps, and molecules as standing behind the stick. After being named Washington DC’s top bartender by Washington City Paper in 2009, Derek opened The Passenger and Columbia Room with his brother Tom to wide acclaim including Bon Appetit’s Top 10 Best New Cocktail Bars, USA Today’s Top 10 American Cocktail Lounges and GQ’s 25 Best Cocktail Bars in America. Because of the brothers different approaches, the bar is divided in two. The front part is Tom’s raucous saloon and in the back is Derek’s intimate cocktail club, Columbia Room.

Derek, nominated in 2010 for a James Beard Foundation Award, fell in love with bartending at his first job in a local Adams Morgan bar where he developed a thirst for the history behind the drinks and the precise technique that now defines his bartending style. Derek moved on to develop celebrated beverage programs as a bartender and sommelier at Washington D.C.’s finest bars and restaurants, gaining recognition as one of the top five new sommeliers in the country by Wine & Spirits magazine in 2007 and as Sommelier of the Year by DC Modern Luxury magazine in 2008, before opening The Gibson and then his celebrated Columbia Room. He was also invited to the White House to serve cocktails during the 2009 holiday parties for the First Family.

In the past year, Derek Brown has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal in an article titled A Master of Mixological Science, featured on CNN, quoted in the New York Times, lauded by Washingtonian magazine as one of Washington DCs 40 Who Shaped 2010, and listed in GQ magazine as crafting the best martini in America. You can find Derek holding seminars, behind the bar in the Columbia Room, writing for TheAtlantic.com and otherwise traveling throughout the country.

Derek is also a founding member of the DC Craft Bartenders Guild and on the Board of Directors for the Museum of the American Cocktail.