City: Seattle
Age: 32
Occupation: Food Entrepeneur
What’s on her mind these days: “Juggling three kids under 3, discovering all the great places to eat in this city, connecting people and making things happen.”

Keren Brown is the real Food Network. A blogger, author, foodie, socialite and entrepreneur, she has perhaps single-handedly united the Seattle food community.
“If I have an idea, I’ll just go for it,” says the 32-year-old mother of three and creator of FranticFoodie.com and a networking organization, Foodportunity.
When Keren moved to Seattle about five years ago for her husband’s job, she knew no one and had no connections. Reminiscent of Julia Child’s rise to food fame while she wiled the days away in Paris, Keren just started to cook. She signed up for cooking classes across the city and started writing about food on her original blog for the Seattle PI, “Confessions of a Wannabe Chef.”
“My goal was to discover food and everything about Seattle,” says Keren of her early days. “It turned into something totally different.”
Meanwhile, she started throwing events for people in her building.
“I wanted to meet people because I was lonely,” she says.
Soon enough, though, Keren’s writing and networking took on lives of their own.
Within a few weeks of blogging for the PI, Keren knew she wanted to blaze her own trails. Frantic Foodie was born, the go-to site for “Seattle food events, food gossip, food recommendations, recipes and everything else about the food world.”
But writing about local food wasn’t enough. Why, she wondered, were all these bloggers writing about Seattle local food without really knowing one another? So one night, she got everyone together for dinner on Capitol Hill.
What started out as a gathering of local bloggers morphed into a full-scale networking event called Foodportunity. Gradually, restaurateurs, journalists, PR companies and even farmers wanted to join the party. Celebrity guests have made appearances, such as Ruth Reichl, former editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine, and Amy Pennington, the Seattleite locavore and author of Urban Pantry: Tips and Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable and Seasonal Kitchen.
“It’s become this one-stop event where everyone networks,” says Keren. No longer just for local writers, Foodportunity welcomes and connects everyone in the food industry, even the casual foodie.
On top of running a booming food networking business, blogging and raising a family, she also has a book under her belt. Food Lovers’ Guide to Seattle is part of the “Food Lovers” series and acts as a complete guide to all things culinary in Seattle, from food festivals to farmers markets. No wonder she was named “Doer of the Week” by Martha Stewart in 2010.