Debra Samuels, cookbook author, cooking teacher—and 2020 recipient of the John E. Thayer III Award for Outstanding Contributions to Cultural Exchange Between the United States and Japan—has been working with children and families for four decades. From 2000 until 2017, Debra was a regular contributor to the Food Section of The Boston Globe. She is co-author of The Korean Table and author of My Japanese Table: A Lifetime of Cooking with Friends and Family, both from Tuttle publishing.

Whether teaching urban 4-H club members about the care of farm animals, groups of Japanese about American cuisine, Americans how to roll sushi, or school teachers about the art and cultural significance of the bento lunch, teaching has always been an integral part of Debra’s professional life.  So has been Japan, where she has lived on and off for a dozen years. After graduating from Lesley College with a degree in elementary education, Debra worked for the Middlesex County (Massachusetts) Extension Service for four years. After six years at the helm of a successful catering business, “Eats Meets West,” Debra worked at Boston Children’s Museum from 1992-1999, where she developed the popular and long-running “Kids Are Cooking” program.  In 2003, she helped produce a nutrition education and cooking guide for teens– The Power of Eating Right— for Cooking Matters, part of Share Our Strength, a national organization focused on ending hunger in the United States. Since 2016 she has been curriculum and program developer for the food education program, Wa-Shokuiku: Learn. Cook. Eat Japanese!, produced by the Japanese nutrition-oriented NGO, Table for Two.

Building upon her experience as an exhibit developer at the Children’s Museum, Debra co-curated the acclaimed “Obento and Built Space: Japanese Boxed Lunch and Architecture” at the Boston Architectural College in 2015, an exhibit that traveled to Berlin, hosted by the Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum.  In 2018, she co-curated “Objects of Use and Beauty: The Design and Craft in Japanese Culinary Tools” at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, Massachusetts. 

Debra has done countless cooking demonstrations and classes on food culture around the world, particularly in Germany and Japan, as well as across the United States.  Debra toured Japan for the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, offering classes at its American Cultural Centers in Nagoya, Osaka, and Fukuoka in 2011. She also made presentations for the Information and Culture Center of the Embassy of Japan in Washington D.C. And, after the publication of My Japanese Table, Debra took her passion for obento on the American road, doing workshops in California, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Alabama.

Margot Carrington, formerly the Program Development Officer of the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, remarked that Debra “has a unique talent to break down barriers between people…There is no telling how much stronger U.S.-Japan relations will become as a result!” In awarding the Thayer Prize to Debra, the managing director of the Japan Society of Boston, Yuko Handa, told Debra that “the committee felt strongly that your work of using food and food education as a means to bridge cultures is a true form of public diplomacy.” Debra puts it this way: Food is an international language, a bridge across cultures. I continue to enjoy educating, entertaining and encouraging people of all ages to be creative and care about its preparation and presentation. I see food as the key to a broad and healthy life.”