Skylar Bayer – Marine Biologist, Science Communicator, and Storyteller

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Skylar Bayer holds a Ph.D. in marine biology from the University of Maine, and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Downeast Institute in Maine. Skylar has dabbled in several different science communication arts including blogging, podcasting and live storytelling.  She has been a storyteller, producer and screener for The Story Collider, appearing on several podcasts. She is also a regular teller at the storytelling group, The Corner, in Lewiston, Maine and is currently on the board for the Brunswick-based storytelling series, Sound Bites.

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She and her husband host their sometimes monthly podcast, The Strictlyfishwrap Science Radio Hour, out of WRFR-LP in Rockland, Maine. Skylar spent most of her early mornings in 2015 reading sports news for the VSTV Sports Quick Fix segment and produced several episodes the SportsFix Roundtable with Mark Haskell.

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She has appeared on Maine Public Broadcasting Network’s Maine Calling, The Colbert Report, and on stage at the 2016 TEDxPiscataquaRiver show. This year she was featured as the cover story of the the June edition of the Lincoln County Magazine in “Scallop Secrets” covering her Ph.D. research on sea scallop reproduction. Next year she is heading to Washington, D.C. as a Sea Grant Knauss Marine Policy Fellow to learn how national policy decisions affect our oceans and coastlines.

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Kathleen Fleury – Editor in Chief, Down East Magazine

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Kathleen was born in Brunswick and grew up on Cousins Island in Yarmouth. After attending Middlebury College in Vermont and the Columbia Publishing Course in New York City, she worked at Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House. She moved back to Maine to join Down East in 2007.

 

She is now the youngest and first woman editor in chief in the magazine’s history. Kathleen is also an advocate for paid family leave and family friendly work policies in Maine and the country. She lives in Camden with her partner and their two (about to be three) children.

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Melissa Kelly – Executive Chef and Proprietor, Primo Restaurant

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Melissa Kelly is the executive chef and proprietor of Primo, Rockland, ME as well as two satellite locations in J.W. Marriot hotels in Orland, FL and Tucson, AZ. She is the winner of 2013 James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef: Northeast. She also received this award in 1999, making her the first 2 time winner of the same award.

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Chef Kelly grew up on Long Island. Her earliest cooking lessons took place in her Italian grandmother’s kitchen and she still favors Mediterranean accented foods today. First in her 1988 graduating class from The Culinary Institute of America, Melissa earned both the Richard T. Keating award and the American Hotel Foundation Scholarship.

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The menu at Primo changes every day to insure that the highest quality ingredients are being served. Melissa has spent the last 18 years expanding the farm situated on Primo’s 4.5 acre property. What started with a greenhouse, 2 acres of organic gardens, and 2 pigs has evolved to include broiler and layer chickens, ducks, guinea hens, bees, and 15 pigs. At peak season about 80% of the ingredients used in the Primo kitchen are sourced from the farm. Fresh and local ingredients are key to Primo’s success. Melissa describes the availability of ingredients fresh from the Primo farm as “the dream way to cook.” Melissa also takes pride in the lessons that she is able to impart to young cooks about where food comes from and the true farm to table experience that Primo offers. The farm not only provides fresh ingredients but allows kitchen waste to be recycled; it is a unique full circle relationship that is very important to Melissa.

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Moderator Bio:Caitlin MacRae

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Caitlin MacRae is a doer, thinker, maker, and schemer. She has worked, variously, as a pastry chef, a sexual health educator, a gardener, a communications manager, a mentor for LGBTQ youth, a letter-answerer, and a whole bunch of other things. She is still figuring it out.

 

 

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