FOUNDER

Founded by serial-entrepreneur, Dominique Love, The Stagiaire Foundation is a culmination of a career in philanthropy and a passion for Southern food and drink.

Love spent more than 15 years in the philanthropic sector as a fundraiser, a corporate donor for The Coca-Cola Company, and as CEO of Corporate Community Outsourcing, an agency she founded to help corporations and nonprofits achieve greater community impact. In 2010, she co-founded with Elizabeth Feichter the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival with a goal of shining an international spotlight on the food and beverage traditions of the Southern US.

In March 2015, UK-based IWSC Group, owner of the illustrious International Wine & Spirit Competition, entered into a joint-venture with the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival and acquired the operations of Corporate Community Outsourcing to establish a base for the group in North America. Following the acquisition, Love assumed the role of CEO of the newly formed IWSC Group North America.  Love exited from IWSC Group at the end of July 2018.

Having completed a year of study abroad in Habay-la-Neuve, Belgium when she was 16, Love knew the power of cultural exchanges and had been envisioning a program that would connect the international culinary world with the epicurean leaders of the South in an educational type of an exchange … and The Stagiaire Foundation was born.