Du Jour: Monika Olivier, BRCWA

The upcoming 12th annual International Cooking Competition, held this year on June 5, 2011, is one the signature projects of the plucky Baton Rouge Center for World Affairs, an organization founded in 1989 by Monika Olivier. In the late eighties, the German-born Olivier was running her family-owned acrylics manufacturing business in Baton Rouge when she asked then-Mayor Tom Ed McHugh to do something to acknowledge the city’s sizeable population of internationals. “Baton Rouge had a large international and multi-cultural community that most people were not aware of,” she recalls. The International Relations Commission was born, later morphing into the Center for World Affairs. The intention of both was to connect international expats and local residents to each other, and connect Baton Rouge to the outside world, a concept which seems like a no-brainer in today’s global society, but wasn’t always an easy sell. Click here to find out how Olivier helped Baton Rouge become a more international city.