Colleen Vincent

Vice President of Community

Colleen Vincent, the vice president of Community for the James Beard Foundation, is a vocal champion for diverse leadership in all sectors of the hospitality industry. She is also the cofounder of Black Food Folks, an influential fellowship of Black excellence in food and drink and executive producer of Black Desserts. She has been featured on panels at the Food Book Fair, the Minority Chef Summit, and represented the Foundation on the High Road Restaurant Roundtable. She has appeared on numerous podcasts and publications and has curated and consulted a wide variety of roundtables and workshops.  

She is a founding advisory committee member for Women in Hospitality United. In 2017, Vincent created a book drive to build a culinary library in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. She sat on the James Beard Foundation Food Conference steering committee and is currently a part of the House Event Programming Committee.  In 2019, Colleen was named a Trailblazer on Dine Diaspora’s 31 Black Women in Food list and was named as a Person to Watch by Imbibe Magazine in 2021. She was recently honored with a Women in Wine nod from the Hue Society and received the 2021 Gumbo Jubilee Award recognizing her work highlighting foodways of the Diaspora. She serves as an Advisory Committee Member for “African/America” exhibition curated by Dr. Jessica Harris and the Museum of Food & Drink (MoFad). She is a member the West Indian Chefs Alliance. Colleen graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. A Brooklyn native, Colleen credits her social justice values to her Grenadian immigrant parents, her multicultural neighborhood, 90’s hip hop, and love of history.