Tell us what’s good to eat, so we can see the worlds you’re making and making yourself ready for.
“June Jo and her team have created great value for us in developing our strategic plans and offerings. I treasure her work and ongoing contributions to our organization.” - Michiel Bakker, VP, Google (2023)
“Our team arrived after a long hard day of unilateral working. At June Jo’s Restaurant on Mars I saw them expand and become multidimensional.” - Christine Robinson, Director, Google (2024)
June Jo Lee is a food ethnographer, author, and cultural strategist who studies how food reveals who we are and where we’re headed
From 2014 to 2024, she served as Google’s first food ethnographer, advising on workplace culture, food systems, and global foodservice strategy across 57 campuses. Previously, as VP of Strategic Insights at The Hartman Group, she led research for companies including Nestlé, PepsiCo, Whole Foods Market, Walmart, and Starbucks, helping shape early frameworks around fresh / less processed, health and wellness, and sustainability.
Her academic training spans East Asian Studies, Medical Anthropology, and the History of Medicine at Harvard University, Yonsei University, and University of Texas at Austin. Her work blends ethnographic rigor, cultural fluency, and narrative clarity.
She is co-author of award-winning picture books, Chef Roy Choi and the Street Food Remix (2017) and Sandor Katz and the Tiny Wild (2022). Her forthcoming book, Kimchi Taco Time (Fall 2026) is about the chili’s way of helping kids to try more, taste more, and feel more.
For a taste of her work: TED Talk, academic paper, and kimchi demos. She lives and eats well in San Francisco.
Philip Lee is a children’s book publisher
He is co-founder of Readers to Eaters, an independent press dedicated to food literacy through books and community programming.
An independent press dedicated to food literacy dedicated to food literacy through books and community programming.
A pioneer in multicultural publishing and co-founder of Lee & Low Books, he was named one of Publishers Weekly’s Top 25 Book Industry Changemakers. He lives in San Francisco with June Jo, his partner in storytelling and life, and their dog Tedi.
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