Zella Palmer, is an author, professor, filmmaker, curator, scholar and the Chair and Director of the Dillard University Ray Charles Program in African-American Material Culture in New Orleans, Louisiana. Palmer is committed to documenting and preserving the legacy African American, Creole, Indigenous and LatinX culinary history. As the Chair of the Dillard University Ray Charles Program, Palmer filmed and produced the Story of New Orleans Creole Cooking: The Black Hand in the Pot documentary. In 2020, under Palmer's leadership, Dillard University launched a Food Studies Minor at Dillard University.

Her latest publications, Recipes and Remembrances of Fair Dillard: 1869-2019 (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press) and James Beard Foundation Semi-Finalist (U.S. Foodways) Ed Mitchell's Barbeque (Harper Collins, June 2023) shares some of her rich research and she released her latest documentary Grenada to the World in August 2025.

Zella is extending her legacy through her work advising higher education institutions, museums, and tourism ministries on integrating artificial intelligence while safeguarding culture, memory, and human meaning. In alignment with her professional work, she is also studying to become an herbal physician, answering a deeply ancestral calling.

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