Team & Founders — Indigenous Global Chefs Collective
About IGCC
The founding collective
A global collective of Indigenous chefs, educators, and food leaders — united by a shared conviction that Indigenous food belongs at the centre of the global conversation.
Who we are
Chefs who carry culture
The founding trustees of IGCC are Indigenous chefs, educators, and food leaders whose knowledge runs deep — rooted in ancestral foodways, community, and a lifelong connection to the ingredients and traditions of their nations. They bring together a remarkable breadth of experience, from professional kitchens and food entrepreneurship to marae cooking and cultural education. They came together not as an institution, but as people — around a shared table, with a shared conviction that Indigenous food deserves its place at the centre of the global culinary conversation.
Hawaiʻi — Big Island
Keoni Regidor
Co-Founder & Trustee
Born and raised in Honoka'a on the Big Island, Keoni grew up in a Hawaiʻi shaped by red dirt roads, community gatherings, and the kind of cooking that comes from the land and sea — not the supermarket. Trained at Hawaii Community College and Leeward Community College, he built his career through some of Hawaiʻi's most respected kitchens, including Merriman's in Waimea. For Keoni, the ingredients he works with — taro, breadfruit, wild pig, fresh fish — are not exotic. They are home. His hope is that the next generation will inherit not just the ingredients, but the knowledge to use them.
Hawaiʻi — Maui
Bonny Davis
Co-Founder & Trustee
Born on Oʻahu and raised on Maui, Bonny has spent over 30 years building a culinary career rooted in aloha, local ingredients, and ancestral foodways. Now Executive Chef of Food Services for Kamehameha Schools Maui, she also co-founded Hawaiian Krunch Company — crafting granola blends using canoe crops like ʻulu, kalo, ʻuala, and niu. Influenced by her Hawaiian, Chinese, and Portuguese grandmothers, Bonny's cooking carries both memory and meaning. "Revitalising ʻulu and other Indigenous crops isn't just about sustainability," she says. "It's about cultural preservation, food sovereignty, and supporting our local farmers."
Aotearoa New Zealand
Hamuera McLeod
Co-Founder & Trustee
Hamuera's (Joe's) culinary education began in the marae kitchens of his home community of Tuhoe in Aotearoa, and grounded in the preservation of Māori food sovereignty. A career spanning Executive Chef de Cuisine roles nationally and internationally was followed by a mission to reconnect his people with classical Māori food traditions. Alarmed by the near-absence of traditional kai at marae across New Zealand, he is a driving force behind the resurgence and education of pre-European Māori food culture — and the use of native ingredients in both traditional and contemporary cooking — as co-founder of E Kai Māori.
Hawaiʻi
Kealoha Domingo
Co-Founder & Trustee
Kealoha Domingo is the chef and owner of Nui Kealoha, his native Hawaiian catering business built on a foundation of traditional Hawaiian values. A multi-generational Hawaiian practitioner, he cooks with a deep respect for the spiritual connection between ʻāina (land), kānaka (humankind), and mea ʻai (food) — blending that ancestral foundation with a touch of contemporary style. His genuine aloha for the land and the community he feeds has earned him wide recognition as an Indigenous Hawaiian chef, and today his mission is to bring traditional Hawaiian food to the global stage.
Kealoha has represented Hawaiian cuisine at events across the world — including the Hawaiʻi Food and Wine Festival, the White House Tribal Leaders gathering, Slow Food International in Turin, and the James Beard House in New York. Nui Kealoha now operates from Capitol Modern in Downtown Honolulu.
North America
Crystal Wahpepah
Co-Founder & Trustee
Crystal Wahpepah carries the title of Indigenous food warrior with real weight — she was the first Native woman to open her own restaurant in Northern California. A citizen of the Kickapoo Nation of Oklahoma, Crystal was raised within Oakland's urban Indigenous community, and it's there that she opened Wahpepah's Kitchen in Fruitvale Village — a restaurant built to reclaim Native foodways and introduce guests to the richness of intertribal Indigenous cuisine. Dishes like Kickapoo chili, venison, and a Three Sisters salad don't just feed people; they're an act of honouring the land and water that provide, while giving her community a space to gather, connect, and heal.
Her work has been recognised well beyond the kitchen. Crystal is an inductee of the Native American Almanac, was a James Beard Emerging Chef Award finalist, and has appeared on Food Network. She's also served as a U.S. State Department culinary ambassador, and has brought her cooking to events for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the American Indian Film Festival.
Aotearoa New Zealand
Adrian McVeigh
Co-Founder, Trustee & General Manager
Born and raised in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Adrian's love of cooking was kindled early — shaped by his mother, his grandmother, and the food that anchored family life. He left school at 15 to work in his first kitchen, spending a decade training under some of New Zealand's top chefs before moving into hospitality management and ownership.
A chance meeting with Chef Hamuera McLeod in 2021 reignited his passion — this time with a deeper purpose. Together they co-founded E Kai Māori, dedicated to the resurgence of traditional and contemporary kai Māori. Adrian also serves as a Director of the Tangata Whenua Network, developers of Tiaki Whenua, reconnecting people to their whenua & whānau. As General Manager of IGCC, he brings both the experience and the conviction to help make it real.
Samoa
Henry Onesemo
Co-Founder & Board Advisor
Henry Onesemo is executive chef and co-owner of Tala in Parnell, Auckland — a restaurant built to bring Samoan cuisine to the top table without losing its warmth. Raised in Samoa around family, service, and the rituals of the umu, his path to the kitchen wasn't a straight one: a stint in the U.S. military, and years performing in Hawaiian luau shows and at Walt Disney World, all shaped the chef he'd become. Since opening in 2023, Tala has earned Cuisine's New Restaurant of the Year, three hats in the Good Food Guide, and Supreme Winner at the Viva Top 50 Restaurants. Henry also became the first Samoan chef awarded One Knife at Milan's Best Chef Awards, and in 2026 Tala received New Zealand's first-ever Michelin Star.
About our governance. IGCC's founding collective includes seven members. Six serve as founding trustees, forming IGCC's initial Committee of Management — the legal governing body of the charitable trust — while Henry Onesemo serves as a founding Board Advisor. As National Collectives grow and elect their Delegates to the International Board, the COM will expand to represent the full breadth of the IGCC network. The founding collective is a starting point, not a ceiling.
The Indigenous Global Chefs Collective collaboration between chefs, producers and educators - Photo Credit Getty Images
Beyond the founders
A growing network
IGCC's founding collective is just the beginning. Behind the six trustees is a wider network of Indigenous chefs, producers, cultural practitioners, and knowledge holders who came together at WIPCE 2025 and continue to grow the collective's reach across the Pacific, the Americas, and beyond.
As National Collectives are formally recognised in each region, that network will deepen — with elected Delegates representing their nations on the International Board, and new voices shaping the direction of the organisation.
IGCC uses a networked governance model where no single region holds dominance. The Committee of Management (trustees) oversees the charitable trust, while the International Board — made up of Delegates elected by each National Collective — ensures that every participating nation has a voice in shared decisions.
Leadership is shared, consensus-oriented, and designed to grow with the network. To learn more about how we govern ourselves, visit our Governance page.
