Food Network pioneer Judy Girard dives into a healthy buffet and the joy of public service at the Blockade Runner
By Dana Sachs
When Judy Girard first retired and moved to North Carolina in 2008, she planned to sit at the beach and “read John Grisham.” She deserved a break, having just left a successful career as a television executive. As president of the Food Network, for example, she guided the struggling cable channel toward becoming a multi-billion-dollar enterprise, using telegenic cooking personalities — Emeril Lagasse, Rachael Ray, and Giada de Laurentis, to name just a few — to show the nation how to make dishes like 30-Minute Shepherd’s Pie and Chicken Marsala.
Judy had earned the right to relax but, instead, she dove into another project, this time with the goal of changing lives. As president of the foundation that supports the Girls Leadership Academy of Wilmington, or GLOW Academy, Judy has helped establish a school dedicated to educating some of our community’s most vulnerable children. GLOW, North Carolina’s first all-girls’ nonprofit charter school, welcomed its initial class of students in August after five years of intensive planning. Founded with guidance and support from national and state leaders, the school aims to improve graduation rates for girls in high-poverty neighborhoods and send more of them to college.
When it opened, GLOW became the 17th school in a national organization called the Young Women’s Leadership Network (YWLN), which has collectively educated thousands of at-risk girls to date. YWLN established its first school in New York City in 1996, and today YWLN schools, which focus on STEAM learning (science, technology, engineering, arts and math), rank among the highest performing in the country. Between 2004 and 2015, some 95 percent of students in the network’s New York City schools graduated from high school, compared with only 64 percent of girls who went to other schools, and the vast majority of YWLN graduates go to college. Studies have shown that single-gender education has significant benefits for girls, including increased confidence in science and math, higher scores on standardized tests, and greater focus on academics and coursework.
It’s expensive to provide an excellent education to low-income students because they need support. For example, a lot of charter schools save money by not offering transportation or free lunch, which puts these schools off-limits for poor children who depend on such amenities. Those charters, as a result, may offer strong academics, but end up serving predominantly middle- and upper-middle-class students. “We knew from the start,” Judy tells me, “that we needed buses and food” in order to attract low-income students. Before GLOW ever opened its doors, the foundation spent five years gathering support, eventually raising the money needed to enroll its first class and lay the groundwork for future expansion. The foundation, Judy says, “lives, eats, and breathes support for those girls.” After welcoming the initial class of sixth-graders in August, GLOW will add one new class every year until the original class graduates in 2023, thus taking these girls from middle school through high school. It will even continue to offer guidance to graduates as they move through college.
Judy and I have met for brunch at the Blockade Runner Beach Resort. The hotel’s sun-filled restaurant, East Oceanfront Dining, looks out toward the hotel lawn and, beyond that, the Atlantic. East’s new chef, Jessica Cabo, has a tie to television, too, having made it to the finals on the first season of “Hell’s Kitchen.” For brunch, she’s updated the standard all-you-can eat, heavy-on-the-sausage-and-syrup hotel buffet into a healthier, more flavorful array of dishes that pop with surprises. Sautéed sun-dried tomatoes, golden cherry tomatoes and slices of yellow pepper, for example, brighten that day’s version of shrimp and grits and, because Cabo avoids heavy sauces, we can taste the tang of the vegetables and the sweetness of the shrimp. The buffet, which changes weekly, does include traditional brunch staples like French toast and Eggs Benedict, but Cabo plays with these staples (serving, for example, Banana Bread French Toast or Crab Cake Benedict) and also adds intriguing alternatives. In the black rice curry, for example, the beautiful, almost-purple grain serves as a backdrop to quick-cooked zucchini, snow peas, carrots and napa cabbage, none of which have lost their bite. “I like that it mixes the crunchy with other textures,” Judy says.
If you’re thinking the former head of the Food Network and I are debating jalapeños versus habañeros, or sautéing versus steaming, we are not. Food doesn’t actually interest Judy. “It’s sad, but true,” she tells me. At the Food Network, “I used to make the chefs nuts because I’d say, ‘Can you make me a piece of broiled fish with nothing on it?’” Emeril Lagasse, for one, has forgiven her. When Judy started raising money for GLOW, the celebrity chef flew down to Wilmington and helped out his friend by hosting two benefits. He raised $275,000, covering the cost of the food and labor himself.
As we talk, I notice that Judy never mentions her successes in terms of her own accomplishments. She’s a master at deflecting compliments, but not in a falsely modest “Oh-Really-It’s-Nothing” way. Rather, she seems to value teamwork, recognizing the talents and passions of others — not just celebrity chefs like Emeril Lagasse but also lower-level colleagues around the office.
At the Food Network, for example, Judy began broadcasting “Iron Chef.” The kooky Japanese culinary show became a surprise cult hit, in part because, instead of using subtitles, the network dubbed it into English. As a result, the over-the-top costumes and staging seemed even sillier, and the show became ridiculously entertaining. It was a counter-intuitive idea, and whom does Judy credit? An intern, she tells me, who “mentioned this Japanese show and said it would be very funny if we dubbed it.”
When talking about establishing GLOW, Judy also focuses on the contributions of others: Georgia Miller, wife of former UNCW Chancellor Gary Miller, who first proposed the school; Mayor Bill Saffo, who quickly got behind it; Todd Godbey, GLOW’s energetic president; Laura Hunter, the principal who, says Judy, “has met with every single family”; and, especially, the girls’ parents, many of whom are single moms who “really want their daughters to have choices in their lives that they didn’t have.”
As we finish lunch, I ask Judy one last question. “Do you miss television?”
She shakes her head. “No,” she says firmly. “I find this exciting, too.”
At this rate, Judy Girard may never have time for John Grisham.
East Oceanfront Dining is located in the Blockade Runner Beach Resort at Wrightsville Beach. Visit www.blockade-runner.com or call (910) 256-2251. If you’d like to know more about the Girls Leadership Academy of Wilmington, or donate to the GLOW Foundation, visit http://glowacademy.net.
Dana Sachs’ latest novel, The Secret of the Nightingale Palace, is available at bookstores, online and throughout Wilmington.
