Meet the Food Publishing Panel

Carol Haddix

Carol Haddix is editor of the weekly "Good Eating" section of the Chicago Tribune. She is responsible for the planning and production of the Wednesday section and supervises the Tribune's test kitchen and food staff.

Under her direction, the food section has won numerous best-section awards from the Association of Food Journalists and writing awards from the James Beard Foundation. She also won a First Place National Food Writing Award from the Brock Center for Agricultural Communication in 1993.

Haddix is a board member and past president of Les Dames d'Escoffier Chicago, a professional food society. She is a member of the Culinary Historians of Chicago and is a board member and past chairman of the James Beard Foundation's book awards committee. She is coauthor of Cook's Marketplace Chicago; food editor of The Chicago Tribune Cookbook, Desserts, Grilling, Holidays, Ethnic Chicago Cookbook, and The Chicago Tribune Good Eating Cookbook; and editor of Chicago Cooks: 25 Years of Food History with Menus, Recipes, and Tips from Les Dames d'Escoffier Chicago.

Prior to joining the Chicago Tribune, Haddix worked for the Detroit Free Press and the Midland (Michigan) Daily News. Haddix holds a bachelor's degree in home economics and communication arts from Michigan State University.

Doug Seibold

Doug Seibold, president and publisher, founded Agate Publishing in 2003. Formerly executive editor of The Noble Press, as well as a long-time book reviewer and food writer, he most recently was the founding editorial director of UNext, an online education company that creates graduate-level business coursework in partnership with Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, and other leading universities.

In 2006, Agate purchased Surrey Books, a 25-year-old Chicago-based publisher of books on food, dining, and entertaining. Surrey is now one of Agate's four distinct imprints, along with Bolden Books, which is devoted to fiction and nonfiction by African-American writers; B2 Books, which is devoted to business-related nonfiction; and ProBooks, which offers textbook and course development services to schools and organizations.

Laura Bruzas

Laura Bruzas is the founding editor and publisher of Healthy Dining Chicago, a newsletter launched in 2003 dedicated to eco-friendly consumers. Bruzas is a newsletter aficionado whose background includes serving as the editor and/or publisher of seven newsletters over a 20-year period, a degree in marketing, 15 years of experience in human resources/recruiting, and a five-year stint with Whole Foods Market serving on their Midwest region marketing team.

Bruzas teaches classes at the Moraine Valley Environmental Institute and delivers corporate and community presentations on the topic "Healthy Dining on a Dime."

Tom O'Brien

Tom O'Brien is principal of O'Brien Culinary Communications, which provides public relations, writing, and communications services to food manufacturers and advertising agencies.

O'Brien is a contributing writer to Restaurant Business magazine, a trade monthly with circulation of 75,000, and its Web site Monkeydish.com. O'Brien also is on the adjunct faculty at Kendall College, where he teaches courses on food writing and food-service public relations to culinary arts students.