THE VISIONARIES

Patricia Rain

"The Vanilla Queen"

www.vanilla.com

Patricia Rain is an internationally recognized author, speaker and educator, a powerful global voice for the earth, indigenous growers, sustainable agriculture, farmers and women worldwide. She is a catalyst for action!

The member of The Global Women's Leadership Network has established and moderates the significant International Tropical Farmers Network (ITFN, her Google Group) that brings together vanilla producers, scientists and others to work collectively to assist thousands of vanilla farmers worldwide.

She has been an honored speaker at the Smithsonian Institute, the Autonomous University of Mexico, The California Academy of Sciences, the International Association of Culinary Professionals. She has been a consultant on vanilla-related issues to USAID; The Secretary of Agriculture and Fisheries, Vera Cruz, Mexico; the Mexican Government, Consejo de Vainilla Veracruzano; Tahitian Import/Export, Inc.; Turin Chocolates; and numerous magazine and book publishers.

Her insatiable curiosity and adventurous spirit, her love of diverse cultures and peoples and travel and history, her thirst for knowledge, encyclopedic memory, broad-based perspective, and unparalleled research skills combined to establish her reputation as a cultural anthropologist and global clearing house for information.

Her first book on vanilla, The Vanilla Cookbook (Celestial Arts, 1986), established her as an authority on this exotic rainforest product. No one had ever combined vanilla's history, botany, lore and food into one book, so it created interest in the culinary and academic worlds. It also created interest on the grass roots level. She had written that book without having visited the Totonac indigenous growers in Mexico. Eight years later, compelled to see for herself the people, the vines, the beans, the magic, she arrived unsure, knowing no one. To her surprise, she was greeted as a celebrity! "La Patricia Rain!" The Vanilla Queen had come to see them. Though the farmers in Papantla spoke no English, they had copies of her book and knew her as a voice who spoke for them in the world.

Her love of vanilla and her desire to help the farmers and their families and way of living led to her profitable, socially conscious product-driven The Vanilla.COMpany www.vanilla.com and also to the founding of the rapidly growing ITFN.

Through her prodigious networking, people from all over the world, not only farmers, heard about this phenomenal woman who cares so much and does so much. Countless people have been contacting her on her website, feeling they had a friend and family, calling her "mother" or "auntie." But don't let her warmth and gentle loving ways fool you. Added to that, she is a determined organized businesswoman who produces results in forums, events, actions on local and governmental levels, articles and books.

Subsequent books of her own have been The Vanilla Chef (Vanilla Queen Press, 2002), a companion book to her information and education Internet site. In 2004, Tarcher, a member of the US Penguin Group brought out her book, Vanilla: The Cultural History of the World's Favorite Flavor and Fragrance.

Her impact and influence is expanding now beyond vanilla: she is writing another promising book on healing ourselves through diverse methods used worldwide; she supports the helping of women in jeopardy by developing sustainable livelihoods, such as vermiculture (growing earthworms to change garbage to compost) in the tropics and internet ecotourism cafes in Africa; she has been approached to be the point person in an ambitious project to establish Jatropha tree plantations in Latin countries for the production of ethanol and biofuels.

With her natural ability to network and bring peoples of the world together, and with their admiration, support and love, she is unstoppable! The modest woman would laugh this off, saying, "I just love what I do and get to do what I want to do and enjoy myself!" Yes, but she does that overcoming strife, setbacks, life-threatening situations. She inspires us all! She embodies Life at its fullest with all its spirit-testing challenges, all the while laughing, dancing, eating sumptuously, learning, creating, loving, caring and serving. It is a thrill to witness on a global scale what I have seen about her on a local scale for almost 25 years: that Patricia Rain is here to make a huge difference on the planet. Fortunate are those who know her, and those who are privileged to work and create with her. She is a force to be reckoned with, this major producer and contributor. Long live The Queen!