Executive Vice President of Food & Beverage of STARR Restaurants

You are not your job. People who care the most and do the most are often the ones who are celebrated, but you should be careful to not tie your identity too closely to your work, for fear of collapse at a certain point. Creating separation actually makes you better at your job.

As leaders, we are going to have to build the next generation of leaders and creatives if we're going to keep this industry alive and un-commoditized and special. We need to go back to teaching certain things and move away from the dilution and inspire cooks to want to be great cooks.

Balance is a choice. If you choose to have relationships and a family and things like that, you have to be able to support that with sufficient attention and time as well

I've always had a connection to creative things and creative people. My parents were both artists growing up. I randomly wandered into cooking because I didn't really see a stable career path to become a drummer, which is what shaped the first 17 years of my life. I thought that becoming a chef was a good balance between creativity and business, two things that I was interested in and that actually turned out to be pretty true.

There's a lot of great places to learn. I wanted to work in a restaurant that had somebody at the helm that would really invest and teach but was a place that you really could learn how to cook.