CHERRY BOMBE JUBILEE

SPEAKINg, BROOKLYN

INTRODUCTION SPEECH AT ANNUAL CONFERENCE FOR WOMEN IN FOOD

Good Afternoon! 

I am so honored to be here. My name is Maya, and I have had the joy of attending Jubilee since year one. An “OG Bombequad” member—if you will.

I was born to immigrant parents, and had the privilege of experiencing both Israeli and Trinidadian cultures from a young age. We would travel to both countries often. I remember visiting Israel to see my grandparents. the scent of flowering jasmine coupled with bus exhaust hit my nostrils, the sun warmed our shoulders from above, and the sound of children laughing, their shoes slapping the sidewalks sounded in the air around us. we’d always be greeted by a plate of seasonal fruits. I would take a bite out of one, its soft flesh giving way to sweet, juicy goodness. My grandmother would lovingly placing her hand on my leg. From a young age, I fell in love with everything that happens around the act of eating. My memories drip with detail, and I grew up wanting to share these experiences.

Naturally, this led me to enter the industry by way of filmmaking in my early twenties. It was around 2011, and I remember telling my dad that I was going to film chefs and restaurants for a living and he laughed at me. He suggested that I focus on weddings, where I was guaranteed pay. But I never planned to be a cinematographer or a photographer in that sense. my interest, at the core of it all, resided in food, and telling the stories of the experiences around it. So I started a blog following my stories of the culinary landscape in the U.S. and abroad. Slowly, I gained following and then clients, and my business, MOJALVO, a branding agency focused on visual storytelling and direction, was born.

Currently, I live in Washington DC, where I am a proud part of a vibrant, female dominated culinary landscape. It’s really special. Clients of mine including some currently in the audience— Chaia, a vegetarian taco concept, Compass Rose, and nationally-recognized Maydan, are all owned and operated by strong women.  Last fall, I traveled to Tbilisi Georgia with the Compass Rose team documenting their visit to the vineyards they buy their skin-contact wine from. We stayed with Baia’s wine, a dynamic, young sister winemaker duo, to help them with their harvest. We awoke at dawn, I pulled back the curtains glowing with amber light from the sunrise, and rows of green vines laid below us. We drank coffee and ate khachapuri and made our way to the vineyard with scissors and crates. I recorded the sounds of snipping vines, heavy clusters of grapes thudding satisfyingly at the base of the buckets, and chickens clucking in the distance. I filmed visuals of hands as they became increasingly sticky from the grape juice, and the impromptu chacha shots that were poured for us mid harvest. I can still remember the taste of the grape I ate, straight from the vine, before the harvest was carried off to the room of Qvevris where the grapes would ferment. We returned to DC with these robust stories of this foreign country, and it was through the collection of film and photography that we could tell an even more compelling story around the Georgian wine culture. These visual stories truly allow for us all to feel like we are there, it allows us to gather with cultures and learn people’s stories, and in doing so, pique our curiosity, and that ultimately develops strong brand loyalty.

Like my trip to Georgia, our next speaker, Cha, has traveled to several wine-focused countries uncovering similar stories—learning and weaving together the knowledge she garners to share with her audience. She uses these stories to empower and educate across all ethnicities, fighting social stigmas, and allowing for us all to embrace our sophisticated palates. I am incredibly humbled to share this industry with powerhouses like Cha, and am in complete awe of her story. Cha, like me, has taken her passions across many vocations, and built a career out of them. She balances a life working in both engineering and hospitality, and fights for equality and expansion of perspective in the wine industry. It’s women like Cha who are shaping the new wave of strong leaders, trailblazing our way through uncharted paths, inspiring other women to persevere and not be afraid to do something out of the ordinary.  Additionally, being a woman of mixed race, I am proud to see Cha do the work that she is doing in our industry to change social norms. It’s about time that we embrace diversity and see one another for our accomplishments and not the color of our skin, or our gender. So, without further ado, I pass the stage on to Cha—I cannot wait to hear from this woman who is doing some incredible things around my favorite topics—travel, food + wine, and most importantly culture, and the art of gathering.