Christine Ha

Christine Ha is the first-ever blind contestant and season 3 winner of the competitive amateur cooking television show “MasterChef” with Gordon Ramsay. She defeated over 30,000 home cooks across America to secure the coveted MasterChef title, a $250,000 cash prize, and a cookbook deal.

Ha holds a Master of Fine Arts from the nationally acclaimed Creative Writing Program at University of Houston, where she served as Fiction Editor for Gulf Coast literary journal, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from The University of Texas at Austin.

Ha’s first cookbook, "Recipes From My Home Kitchen: Asian and American Comfort Food," was a New York Times best-seller. She has done several TEDx Talks, spoken about disability advocacy at the United Nations, and served as a culinary arts envoy overseas for the American Embassy as part of cultural diplomacy programs in Jordan, Serbia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Croatia, and Vietnam. Ha was a co-host on the Canadian cooking show “Four Senses” and a judge on “MasterChef” Vietnam. She also serves on the Board of Trustees for Helen Keller Int’l, a global non-profit that helps millions of people achieve clear vision, sound nutrition, and good health. In 2023, she became a fellow of the distinguished James Beard Foundation Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership program.

Ha received the 2014 Helen Keller Personal Achievement Award from the American Foundation for the Blind, a recognition formerly bestowed upon Ray Charles, Patty Duke, and Stevie Wonder among others. Ha’s first restaurant in Houston, The Blind Goat, was named a semi-finalist for 2020 Best New Restaurant in America by the James Beard Foundation. She was also named a James Beard finalist for Best Chef, Texas, in 2022 and a semi-finalist for Outstanding Chef in 2023 for her former restaurant, Xin Chào. Ha’s third concept, Stuffed Belly, opened in June 2023.