BIO

Sometime in early 2008, I had an epiphany. The culinary career I had built over the previous twelve years had started to wear me down. I was exhausted. I opened two restaurants in three years and had been working eighty-hour work weeks for almost as long. I was newly married but rarely able to spend time with my wife. I missed family gatherings and never took vacations. The industry I had come to love was threatening to steal from me my happiness and my passion for food. I knew I needed to make a change if I was to have any chance at long-term emotional and financial security.

My brothers and I didn’t grow up around computers. Personal computing in the 1980’s wasn’t remotely in our household’s budget. Our parents divorced when I was in middle school and both worked hard to make ends meet. It wasn’t until the late 90’s that I owned my first PC- an Apple PowerBook G3. When I wasn’t working in the kitchen, I was likely on that laptop. I was fascinated by it. It was portable, sleek, had a beautiful display and could plug into the blazing fast cable internet of the time. I was making up for lost time, learning everything I could about computers; how they worked, what they were capable of. The Information Age was in full swing and many of my restaurant peers were going back to school and gaining skills needed to stake claim in the dotcom gold rush. My best prospects at the time were in the kitchen, but my exploration of this newfound technology offered a welcome escape from the stresses of the daily restaurant grind. I might have suspected this hobby would prove valuable one day, but I was focused on a different journey.

For the next ten years or so, I cooked. I moved to Charleston, South Carolina and back and spent a couple years on North Carolina’s Crystal Coast. I had the good fortune to work alongside very talented culinary professionals. I held every kitchen rank from dishwasher to Executive Chef. I’ve cooked dinners with nationally recognized culinary personalities. Working in hospitality can be immensely gratifying, and I had no shortage of gratifying experiences. But after some time my enthusiasm for the industry began to fade and a professional kitchen is no place to be when that happens.

In the summer of 2008, I made the decision. I turned in my toque for a graduation cap, needing only two years to complete an undergraduate degree. Since then I’ve forged a new career in Information Technology. Occasionally, people will ask me how one goes from cooking professionally to working in IT. I try my best to explain the two have more in common than most people realize. I work with a talented team of professionals who care about doing quality work. Like with high quality or exotic ingredients, the current state of IT provides no shortage of new and exciting tech to work with to deliver positive business outcomes. It all feels very familiar.

So these days I mostly cook and I play with technology. Not much has changed other than the terms by which I do both. My passions for food, cooking, and hospitality are very much intact. I have more time to spend with family and friends and to travel. In my spare time, I might hit the links and try to keep it in the fairway, or set out on the water and try to catch a few fish. And while I might not always be successful at either of those things, I do my best to enjoy the opportunities.