Greg Drescher is senior advisor for strategic initiatives at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA). Previously, as vice president for strategic initiatives and industry leadership, he was the architect of many of the college’s leadership initiatives, spanning academic partnerships, conferences, industry collaboratives, and digital media.
Over more than 30 years at CIA, Drescher co-founded the Worlds of Flavor® International Conference and Festival and helped launch leading health and sustainability initiatives, including Menus of Change® and Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives® (both with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health); the Menus of Change® University Research Collaborative (with Stanford University and more than 80 colleges and universities); and the Food is Life, Food is Health Summit (with Stanford Medicine).
He was inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America in 2005 and has received multiple James Beard Awards for his team’s work on Savoring the Best of World Flavors. In 2017, Foodservice Director named him one of “20 People Shaping Foodservice Today.” He has served on the Board of Executives for the Robert Mondavi Institute of Wine and Food Science at UC Davis and was inducted into the Accademia dei Georgofili in Florence.
Before joining CIA in 1995, Drescher co-led a global collaboration with leading health experts and organizations—including the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the World Health Organization—to develop “The Mediterranean Diet Pyramid: A Cultural Model for Healthy Eating,” published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1995). In 2025, he co-authored a follow-up review marking three decades of its impact.
Drescher travels extensively in search of culinary inspiration and has organized major international conferences on food, culture, and health across Europe, North Africa, Asia, and the Americas, including the Pontifical Academy of Sciences at the Vatican. Profiled by Bon Appétit as the “Flavor Hunter,” he continues to explore the intersection of flavor, health, and sustainability.
He lives in Sacramento with his wife, Chef Mai Pham, owner of Lemon Grass Restaurant and Star Ginger, and author of The Best of Vietnamese and Thai Cooking and Pleasures of the Vietnamese Table.