Paola Wiciak Clay Williams

Wiciak is a Costa Rican illustrator living in the Czech Republic. She has drawn portraits for a long list of brands, including Adidas, IBM and Siemens. For Best of the Best, she sketched the Lifetime Achievement and One to

Watch award winners for all 15 categories. “The illustrations created for this issue are a collection of powerful portraits,” she says. “I wanted to make use of vibrant colors to make these individuals stand out in the way they genuinely do in their own fields.”

Williams has been photographing food and drink for newspapers, magazines and blogs since 2006. The shoot for the dining section of Best of the Best took him to one of chef JJ Johnson’s restaurants in New York (p. 178). “I first photographed chef JJ back in 2014, when he was cooking groundbreaking cuisine at the Cecil,” he says. “It’s always great working with him, and I was so glad to see his newly opened Fieldtrip location in Rockefeller Center.” Williams is the cofounder of Black Food Folks, a platform for Black professionals working in food, food service and food media.