Marina Stephanou

• Marina is a globetrotting food enthusiast who has sampled local specialties in 50+ countries and believes that shared meals bring people together in a way that transcends geographical boundaries.
• She balances her culinary arts foundations with a trio of hand-picked food science textbooks to inform culinary experiments in her home kitchen.
• She once led cooking classes to bring Middle Eastern cuisine to people's kitchens after cooking her way through Sami Tamimi's "Falastin."

Experience

A creative at heart, Marina started out co-crafting ad campaigns for global brands like Lufthansa and Mercedes-Benz, but discovered her forte while serving up clear and accurate copy for German catering companies and retailers. A decade of food and travel blogging later, she launched a website devoted to Japanese matcha and off-the-beaten track foodie destinations. After completing an internship aimed at elevating African cultural and culinary traditions, she spent three years sharpening her kitchen skills, aided by her planet-spanning cookbook collection of over 60 titles. In her free time, Marina will either be jetting off to the next food capital on her bucket list or whipping up healthy meals and sharing cooking tips and tutorials via Instagram that take the guesswork out of food prep.

Education

Marina earned a copywriting diploma with distinction from the UK's College of Media and Publishing, where she honed her skills in digital and print media. She attended culinary technique classes at Boston's Milk Street cooking school. She also holds a bachelor's in French and German and a master's in translation and interpreting from Bath University, UK.