LDEI Woman of Purpose Award presented to Nashville Dame Tallu Schuyler Quinn

This year Les Dames d’Escoffier International introduced our Woman of Purpose Award presented in Partnership with YETI…recognizing an exceptional Dame who has set herself apart by making a positive impact in a local or global community, incorporating the important and complex realms of global sustainability, food justice and public health.

It was not an easy decision for chapters to award one outstanding woman with this coveted title. Each of this year’s 21 nominated Dames: Aubrey Alvarez, Jerilyn Brusseau, Maria Campbell, Gracie Cavnar, Joi Chevalier, Sara Danesin, Tiffany Derry, Angie DuPree, Sibella Kraus, Nancy Matheson-Burns, Shanita McAfee-Bryant, Araceli Ramos, Asata Reid, Tallu Schuyler Quinn, Merri Schwartz, Barbara Sibley, Elle Simone Scott, Leigh Sloss-Corra, Amber Stott, Linda Triesch and Ann Harvey Yonkers ~ are an inspiration and have made and continue to make a positive impact.

This year’s Woman of Purpose is Dame Tallu Schuyler Quinn, founder of The Nashville Food Project, a non-profit dedicated to bringing people together to grow, cook and share nourishing food with the goals of cultivating community and alleviating hunger.

In a short decade, her project has flourished. Beginning in a modest church kitchen with a few volunteers and a truck delivering sandwiches and bottled water to homeless camps, The Nashville Food Project under her guidance has grown into multi-pronged, interrelated initiatives including community meals (last year, the organization served 200,000 meals), food recovery (last year, keeping 220,000 pounds of food from the landfill), and a multi-acre community farm that grows food that is shared with thousands of Nashvillians. An additional “Growing Together” garden assists experienced growers who came to the United States as refugees in growing food for supplemental income.

Tallu: “We have to practice what we hope for as if what we hope for might be possible. We have to flex our muscles of imagination, and we have to keep flexing, for the bearing witness matters.”

Indeed, Tallu has shown that her vision is achievable; that good food is more than a basic human need, it is a right. She unselfishly shares her time, talent and resources for the betterment of her community at large.