Happy Birthday Julia! Panel Discussion Participants

Julie Cohen is the Academy Award® nominated, Emmy winning director and producer of RBG (Magnolia, Participant, CNN Films, 2018) along with Betsy West. Her film My Name is Pauli Murray, also directed with West, premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. Previous films she’s directed include The Sturgeon Queens (7th Art Releasing; Berlinale, 2015; Best of the Fest, San Francisco Jewish Film Festival), and Ndiphilela Ukucula: I Live to Sing (2014 New York Emmy Award for Best Arts Program). Before she started making documentaries, Julie was a longtime staff producer for NBC News. She’s been an enthusiastic amateur cook and baker ever since her parents bought her a Cuisinart for her bat mitzvah in the 1970s.

Betsy West is an Academy Award®-nominated Emmy winning director/producer of RBG
(Magnolia, Participant, CNN Films, 2018), along with Julie Cohen. Most recently, she and Cohen directed My Name is Pauli Murray (Participant/Amazon Studios), which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2021. Betsy was executive producer of the MAKERS PBS/AOL documentary and digital series about the modern women’s movement, and the feature documentary The Lavender Scare (PBS, 2019). As an ABC News producer and executive producer of the documentary series Turning Point, she won 21 Emmy awards. Betsy is the Fred W. Friendly Professor Emerita at Columbia Journalism School.

Alex Prud’homme has been a nonfiction writer for thirty years. As a journalist he has covered a wide range of subjects for publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Time. As an author, he has written eight books, on subjects ranging from terrorism to biotech, fresh water, and food.

Prud’homme is best known for co-writing Julia Child’s 2006 memoir My Life in France, which became a #1 NYT best-seller and inspired half of “Julie & Julia.” His sequel, The French Chef in America, was published in 2016. His book of Paul Child’s photographs, France is a Feast: the Photographic Journey of Paul and Julia Child, was published in 2017 and led to a photo show at the Napa Valley Museum, in Yountville, CA. In February 2022, Boyd’s Mills & Kane will publish his illustrated children’s biography, Born Hungry: Julia Child Becomes “The French Chef.”

In the Spring of 2022, Alfred A. Knopf will publish Prud’homme’s as-yet-untitled narrative history of presidential food. From George Washington facing starvation at Valley Forge in 1777 to Donald Trump’s burgers and Kamala Harris’s masala dosas, the book looks at the American story through a culinary lense. How did we get from there (hoecakes and squirrel stew) to here (jellybeans, kale and the obesity crisis)? What does that arc tell us about our leaders as individuals with sometimes quirky tastes, the role of the White House and its food policies, and how the nation’s diet reflects its evolution? The book will include recipes and illustrations.

Todd Schulkin, Executive Director, The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts

Todd is the Executive Director of The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts representing the Foundation’s intellectual property and managing the Foundation’s operations. A non-profit, the Foundation protects Julia Child’s legacy and makes grants to support scholarships for professional culinary training, food media as well as professional development, food literacy and culinary history research programs. Todd has helped the Foundation create the Julia Child Award, the annual Santa Barbara Culinary Experience and the Julia scripted television pilot for Lionsgate and HBO Max. He also hosts, writes and produces the Foundation’s podcast INSIDE JULIA’S KITCHEN for Heritage Radio Network. Beyond the Foundation, Todd manages the careers of content creators including multi-award-winning cookbook author and founder of La Varenne Cooking School, Anne Willan, and Nicole Jefferson Asher, creator of Netflix’s Emmy-nominated and NAACP Image Award-winning limited series SELF MADE.

A seasoned marketing executive, Todd spent five years as an account director at WPP agencies, where he worked with leading brands such as Adobe, HP, and Mazda. Todd was also a literary agent at Innovative Artists Talent & Literary Agency, where he helped discover writer-director Christopher Nolan and sold Nolan’s film MEMENTO. He holds a BA from Brown University and an MBA from London Business School.