California native and TFL contributor Amy will travel for cheese. Case in point: She packed up the car and drove from her Bay Area home to Boston to work for Culture cheese magazine. She now travels the country hosting Counter Culture, a series of events and seminars for the cheese industry. Talk to her about her love of the golden stuff and she’ll wax poetic—but don’t ask her to choose a favorite. “All of them,” she says.

When Amy’s not camping in the desert, drinking dirty martinis, or hanging out with her three-year-old Sphynx cat named Rachel Rambo, she’s working on building Be Magic Now, a brand alignment and marketing company for small businesses—including food startups. It’s yet another opportunity for her to tell the stories of makers and artisans. “They have so much to teach us about motivation, perspective, influence, and craft,” she says.