Born in Taipei, Danielle Chang learned from an early age that food + family = a recipe for happiness. She learned how to make zongzi from her 98-year-old Shanghai grandmother, grew up eating chicken feet in Houston when Asian food (and Asians) were a novelty, and then moved to the Bay Area for high school, where NOT being Asian was a novelty.
Danielle created her company LUCKYRICE to follow her lofty, yet life-long, passion to create a platform for Asian culture. She is the founder of the LUCKYRICE Festival, a nationwide showcase of Asian food culture in the U.S., and the host and creator of the PBS series LUCKY CHOW, where she explores the interest in Asian culinary culture today and the stories behind why our tastebuds are gravitating East. Her cookbook, Lucky Rice: Stories and Recipes from Night Markets, Feasts, and Family Tables, was published in 2016 by Clarkson Potter.
As a cultural entrepreneur, she has worked in the business of culture for the past quarter of a century, from the worlds of art and media to fashion and food. After earning her Masters degree in Critical Theory from Columbia University, she was a professor of contemporary art history as well as a curator of emerging art. Most recently, she was the CEO of Vivienne Tam, a fashion company. Instead of the visual arts, her focus today is the culinary arts, an appetizing and universal lens through which to share stories about our current obsession with Asian culture.