You can’t ask Pamela Graviet how many walnuts she’s eaten when you meet her. For that’s a count she doesn’t keep. The Vice President Integrated Marketing California Walnut Commission & Board, says her habit starts from the morning hour and goes well into her day and evening. That’s not all, she can deftly whip up the most interesting ways to add the nut to your plate. This, from a thoroughbred marketing whiz, with over 35 years in the corporate driving seat and who shares business acumen as deftly as when she wields an apron. Pamela is someone who’s lived the dream – having forged success in marketing, product development, brand management and global marketing communications, in both international and domestic markets. She dropped into Mumbai from her sunny homeland state recently, and brightened up the conversation with all things walnut. Excerpts from our chat…

ELLE: Pamela, you've worn several hats to date, which one is your favourite?

Pamela Graviet (PG): For me all through my career, my favourite hat has been doing international market development. I find it exciting. I’ve always been fascinated by other cultures of the world, to figure out how a product and service you have is beneficial somewhere else in the world. And if it is, how do you communicate that with the people who live there? It means the need to get to know what people’s lives are about, what makes them happy and sad. For me, it’s almost like solving a puzzle and that’s probably my favourite thing to do. My learning is this combination of things: I ask what people’s lifestyle is about, what a typical household is like? How do people cook? What kind of tools do they use? These are all important questions. A big part of it is also understanding that country’s history as that really defines how that it has grown and evolved. For instance, in Italy, there’s a deep love for family and a pride about the history and culture, much like India. This also influences the culinary habit. 

ELLE: What has led to walnuts being on the Indian plate now, more than ever?

PG: Walnuts have always been here, of course, mainly in northern areas where they’re grown, but they never made it any further through the country as there just wasn’t enough. Now, you’re importing from California, so there’s more supply. The world’s become a smaller place through food and accessibility to it. For instance, we get fresh mangoes from India, where my grandmother didn’t even know what a mango was! Has that also led to more accessibility with walnuts? Yes, absolutely.
The influence of a place also plays a key role. In Turkey, walnuts have been part of the diet for thousands of years. But back home in the US, walnuts are mostly used for desserts, like in carrot cake, brownies and banana-nut bread. I had never thought of having walnuts with cucumber, feta cheese and tomatoes, yet it’s so refreshing. Plus, there’s fusion happening in the world of food, particularly in India. You see people wanting to savour Japanese mixed with Indian and some French in front of you, and you go, “Whoa, wow!’ Walnuts touch all of these cuisines and the picture comes together about how you see walnuts being used in an entirely different way. It’s a happy discovery on all counts.    

ELLE: Health-wise, Is this one of the most successful journeys for a crop ever? 

PG: We’ve definitely seen this. In so many parts of the world, there was always this belief that because the walnut looks like a brain, it’s good for the brain. We fast forward to today and find walnuts are also heart-healthy food. Then there are scientific health claims in the European Union and US, Spain and other places – that they’re good for the gut. Walnuts are also good for skin, for sleep and for fertility, so when you look at all the nuts with their nutrition benefits, walnuts tend to have a much broader spectrum. In fact, I would say, undoubtedly, this is the King of Nuts. People have also been saying, “Oh walnuts have melatonin, so I don’t have to take a pill and I just have to eat a few before bed consistently and I’ll sleep better!”
   

ELLE: Culinary-wise, are more people also waking up to the walnut’s texture?

(PG): Absolutely; with people looking for healthier alternatives, they’re looking at how to add better nutrition into their food. The beauty of a walnut is that it literally can be used across all your meals in different ways. Let’s say, if it’s breakfast and you’re going to have a typical cereal or maybe like what I have - a plate with cucumber, tomatoes, a hardboiled egg, a couple of dried apricots and some fresh fruit. Having walnuts with that adds texture as well as some extra protein. One of my favourite things in the summer is a salad that you can also have in a sandwich. You just cut some grilled chicken into pieces, add chopped celery, red onions, grapes, chopped walnuts and a little yoghurt, mayonnaise or any other binding sauce. Walnuts go well in a sauce, too. We’re used to muhammaras and pestos, but you can make a walnut hummus or walnut crème and have this as a spread on a sandwich. It’s simple and easy to do at home. Another idea is to make koftas with walnuts and mushrooms and use millet or rice as a binder and have it Italian-style with a sauce or Asian-style with ginger, garlic and soy sauce. Thus, it can go a lot of different ways throughout your whole day.     

ELLE: Does the Indian market for California Walnuts show promise? Were there any uphill climbs you've faced here?

PG: There are challenges, yes. One of them is a lot of people not knowing how to keep walnuts fresh. You have a very hot, very humid climate here and walnuts – even though you call them a dry fruit – are not completely dry, they still have some moisture to them. You would usually buy them, then add them into a recipe and keep them in your pantry or leave them on the counter, come back a few weeks later, and go, “Oh they don’t smell as good or taste as good”. That is because walnuts don’t like humidity. So, for us, our biggest challenge centres around telling people how to store them. Walnuts are a semi-dry food and you need to keep it in the fridge so as to enable to get optimum freshness. It’s very different from how you would deal with another dry fruit because walnuts, due to their polyunsaturated fats, tend to be more sensitive than say an almond, or a pistachio. That said, the Indian market does show a lot of promise. When I started with the Walnut Commission nine years ago, we had just started working in India to create a lot of awareness and recipe development, and back then people didn’t know much about what to do with walnuts. That has changed so much, today. Looking at figures, when you see how much was being consumed in India between local production and anything coming from another country, it was probably about 20,000 metric tonnes for the whole nation. Today, that figure is close to 100,000 metric tonnes and growing! The growth in demand is driven by multiple reasons - a rise in health and wellness snacking, having more accessibility to walnuts and the socio-economic change here in India.       

ELLE: What are the key strategies that have led to CW delivering exceptional produce, year on year?

PG: I think this would really be a testament to our growers. California is blessed with one of the most fertile valleys in the entire world – the Central Valley – where we grow over 200 different kinds of crops, one of them being the walnut. The valley is distinct and massive, with exceptional soil, a Mediterranean-style climate, and a beautiful mountain range to the East. We also have a short rainy season and though we do have cycles of drought, the growers are equipped with new technology, enabling them to deal with farming issues, for instance, a sensor that is put into the ground to check the moisture level in the soil that surrounds the roots of the trees. That’s just one of the many different advanced methods used to improve soil health. We also have multi-generational families that pass on their knowledge down the generations. Between our blessed valley and this generational knowledge and technology, they’re able to not only maintain quality, but each year they also look at how they can make the produce better. 

ELLE: With over 35 years’ experience in marketing, product development, brand management and global marketing and communications, you have traversed different fields. What attracted you to the walnut industry?

PG: Actually, two things. A large part of my career has been involved in agriculture. I believe food is how we talk to each other, globally, so I’ve always been attracted to anything that has to do with food and beverage. I also have these really fond memories of having this family warmth around nuts. When I was a little girl, my parents had this big wooden bowl with different kinds of nuts in their shell along with a cracker and metal picks, and during our family time on the weekend, we would sit down and either play board games or just talk while we ate nuts. Later in life, when I heard that California Walnuts was looking for someone for international marketing, I thought, ‘Oh I love walnuts, I’m a California native – born and raised – so it’s my home state, it’s agriculture, and this is a natural, healthy product - and with all of that together I thought I’d be heartbroken if I wasn’t selected for this job. Today, I feel so blessed because those nine years have gone by in the blink of an eye.

ELLE: What does a successful business run on the most – is it awareness of customer needs, understanding risks, adaptability, effective marketing or all of the above?

PG: I think it’s a combination of things, but first and foremost it is passion. And if you’re a leader, it’s passion for your employee’s success, not your success. I think it’s also willingness to take risks because sometimes the rewards are great, but you’re going to have failures as well. It’s not beating yourself up over the failure, it’s learning from it, and saying, ‘What could I have done differently?’. The other part of it is listening – to your customer, to your employees and your suppliers, so that you really understand what their challenges are or what their recommendations are. These are what really add up to success.

ELLE: For someone who deals so closely with food, are you fond of Indian cuisine?

PG: I’ve been coming back for the last nine years to Mumbai and other parts of India, and I always look forward to it each time. The food here definitely excites me and the spice use doesn’t frighten me. Growing up in California, where there is so much Mexican influence, one is no stranger to this, though of course, the chillies used there are different. I love how the Indian spice use is so complex! Everywhere else, it’s like a little of this and that, but here it’s like an assortment of different spices and how they all work together just fascinates me.