Tama Matsuoka Wong

Forager, usa

Tama Matsuoka Wong served more than 25 years as a financial services lawyer in Tokyo, New York and Hong Kong where she was Asia Pacific General Counsel for Merrill Lynch. After returning to her native New Jersey she rediscovered her passion for the natural world, launching Meadows and Mor LLC to connect experts in the field of meadow restoration, botany and wildlife with people in the community., serving on the advisory board of several local nonprofits such as New Jersey Conservation, NJ Audubon and Bowmans Hill Wildflower Preserve.

In 2007 she was named Steward of the Year by the New Jersey Forest Service. She began exploring the edible potential of wild plants, working closely with Michellin-starred NYC chef, Eddy Leroux, to author Foraged Flavor, a wild food field guide and cookbook (Clarkson Potter June 2012), nominated for a James Beard award. In 2017 she co-authored Scraps, Wilt and Weeds with Danish chef Mads
Refslund, building on illuminating conversations with NRDCs Dana Gunders and Harvard Law School Professor Emily Broad Lieb. In addition to running an innovative wild food business and supplying chefs and outlets in the NYC area, Tama
speaks to diverse audiences such as the James Beard House, Garden Club of America, the American Museum of Natural History, Slow Food, schools and has hosted foraging events everywhere from Charleston to Seattle to Toronto.
Tama has been featured in CBS Sunday Morning “Our war against weeds” as well as the NY Times “Finding Flavor in the Weeds”, the WSJ, Edible Manhattan, Bloomberg Stealth lawyers, NPR Science Friday, among others. She gave a 2013 TedX Manhattan talk on: “How I did less and ate better, thanks to weeds”.

Tama lives in Hunterdon County, New Jersey with her husband and has three daughters.