Ximena Montilla Arreaza

Ximena Montilla Arreaza, known as Ximena con X (Caracas, 1976), is a Venezuelan-Spanish psychopedagogue, neurogastronomist, writer, and cultural promoter. She is the director of Arraigo Group Publishing (U.S.) and the Arraigo Foundation, both dedicated to preserving and promoting the intangible heritage of Spanish-speaking countries. For the past five years, she has led *Historia de la Arepa*, a multidisciplinary platform that connects art, gastronomy, and collective memory through the contributions of more than 300 collaborators. Ximena has been a TEDx speaker with her talk *Spanish as an Affective Language*, a member of the Women Economic Forum (WEF), and the recipient of nine Gourmand Awards, six International Latino Book Awards, and the Armando Scannone Award for the *Historia de la Arepa* project. She represented Venezuela at the International Gastronomy Symposium in Umeå, Sweden (2023).