Thomasina Miers OBE

Co-founder and CEO of Wahaca Restaurants, Thomasina Miers is a chef, food writer and broadcaster. Thomasina won the BBC’s MasterChef and went on to start one of the most successful restaurant chains, Wahaca, shortly after. Inspired by Mexican food markets, Wahaca is an eco-friendly business, exclusively using sustainably sourced fresh produce and recyclable and biodegradable products.

Learning to cook from a young age, Thomasina’s passion took her to cookery school in Ireland and then to Mexico where, aged just eighteen, she set up a cocktail bar for her friends. It was the diverse, colourful range of ingredients, the variety of flavours and the classlessness of the food that sparked her interest in Mexican cuisine. After winning MasterChef and meeting her future business partner Mark Selby, Wahaca was born with the aim of creating a sustainable, modern food business.

In her talks, Thomasina discusses the intersection between sustainability, leadership and innovation. She examines the value of placing sustainability at the core of a company’s culture in terms of brand, reputation and business development. Thomasina also discusses leadership in relation to facing adversity and the idea of ‘giving back’, which she argues is integral to a business’s position in the community and its role in society.

Thomasina is the author of a number of cookery and food books and writes a weekly column in the Guardian Magazine. She has presented food programmes for Channel 4 and Channel 5, and has appeared on BBC Breakfast, The Apprentice: You’re Fired, and Pointless Celebrities. Thomasina has also been a part of a number of sustainability and food waste campaigns, and Wahaca has won the Sustainable Restaurant Group award.